Peanut Sauce in the Land of Little Peanut Butter

So, I had nothing in the house to eat... or so I thought. I went scrounging around and found an old bag of peanuts... hmmm, I thought. Maybe I should make a peanut sauce. But peanut sauce often calls for peanut butter, not just peanuts. Well, I guess I should just make it my own way then. And I did.

The sauce turned out great, but I ate it with pasta. The pasta was just too bland to go with it. I should have used chicken or something- like chicken satay. That would have been amazing... but I was going with what I had. I should have eaten the sauce all on it's own. That would have been just fine.

The recipe I started with was on cooks.com and here is the link:

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1715,129179-245193,00.html

I can't get the page to come up, so I hope I can remember what I did... of course, it's never going to be exactly the same.

Here we go:

5 tsp oil (to make up for the missing oil in the peanut butter along with the 4 it called for)
1/2 cup chopped red onion
2 T chopped garlic
1 cup water
1 tsp hot red pepper
3 T sugar
3 T vinegar
1/2 C peanuts- shelled (with the papery part off too)
(if there is anything I'm missing in the cooks.com recipe except for the peanut butter, I probably did use it... I just can't look it up right now- my internet is screwy.)

Anyhow, so I put the oil, red onion, and garlic in the blender. I also added just a hint of water (turn the fawcet on and off really quickly) because it wouldn't blend well without it. Once it was done blending, I put it in a sauce pan on the stove on low heat just like the recipe calls for. I then took the 1/2 cup peanuts and the red pepper (I just had a whole dried one... I estimated what 1 tsp would be) and put it into the grinder. I ground it till it was very fine, almost peanut butter consistency (it did start to come together, but I did not form a full peanut butter). When the pan started smelling like garlic and onion, I added the peanut and pepper mixture. I then added the cup water, stirred everything together with a whisk and let it thicken for about 10 minutes on low heat... When it came together I whisked in the sugar and vinegar. I started with 2 T like the recipe calls for, but thought 3 tasted better. Once it was all blended properly, it's done... taste to be sure it's to your liking, but mine was wonderful at this point.

Then, I added a bunch of pasta... Maybe if I only added a little pasta it would have worked, but I really think this is a better sauce for some chicken or something. It just added this starchy-flavorless substance that didn't really add anything and toned down the flavor. Is it okay? Yeah, but disappointing after the sauce worked out so well!

Verdict? The sauce is really good! But don't use pasta (or maybe try rice noodles). Chicken would be better.

Cheers!