These skewers are easy to throw together and make a delicious weeknight meal. They’re also great on the barbecue or at even cold at a picnic! Which seems super appropriate seeing as it’s Cup day and those are two things that hopefully someone is doing today! But anyway, I love the salty unaminess (making up words again) of them against the cool and refreshing salad.

You can serve these with some steamed brown rice on the side or even some cauliflower fried rice and to make a more complete meal. I usually throw in an extra serve of greens like beans or snow peas or stir some peas through the rice to up my vegetable in take too.

The flavor of that fresh minty salad is so nice with the caramelized miso marinade and toasted sesame seeds bring both things together.

The great thing about these is you can prepare them in advance and leave them to marinade then just turn on the barbecue (or heat a pan) when you get home from work, steam some rice and put that super simple salad together and you’ve got dinner sorted. Even if you don’t prepare them in advance this won’t take you long, cutting and threading the chicken on to skewers is the most complicated part.

For a vegetarian version you can also make this recipe with eggplant instead of chicken. But if you do this and don’t want to bbq or cook them in the pan you can try roasting them in the oven for 30 minutes (turn at least once) instead.

Random question: do you remove things from skewers with your fork or knife before eating or are you an eat straight from the skewer guy or girl? I do both, but I have an obsession with eating all the things in the same mouthful, striving for that perfect bite, so with something like this I always end up pulling out the skewer and mixing everything up on my plate… It probably sounds like this makes the skewer somewhat pointless right? But I would argue that it’s such a great way to cook them so it’s not pointless at all. And I make the choices in my kitchen so you can’t tell me other wise (I’m sticking out my tongue right now).

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 chicken breast, cut into 3cm cubes

Marinade

2 Tbs miso paste

1 tsp sesame oil

2 Tbs toasted sesame seeds

2 tsp freshly grated ginger

2 Tbs Chinese cooking wine

1 Tbs soy sauce (use tamari for gluten free)

1 tsp maple syrup

Salad

½ cucucmber, cut in half lengthways and finely sliced

1 cup mint leaves

2 tsp toasted sesame seeds

1 tsp black sesame seeds (if you have thems)

1 tsp freshly grated ginger

zest and juice of 1 lime

a few drops sesame oil

8 bamboo skewers soaked in water for at least 20 mins prior to using.

1 Tbs rice bran oil

Optional: Brown rice to serve

Directions

Mix together the marinade ingredients. Toss the chicken in the marinade and allow to marinade for 20 minutes-2 hours.

Meanwhile, combine salad ingredients excluding lime juice and sesame oil.

Thread the chicken pieces on to the soaked bamboo skewers.

Heat rice bran oil in a large heavy based pan. Alternatively heat a BBQ grill plate. Cook skewers in the pan/on the grill. Turning every few minutes until all sides are browned and chicken is cooked through.

Add lime juice and sesame oil to the salad and toss.

Pile skewers on a serving platter with the salad on the side.

HH. x