Saté Ajam met Pindasaus

Some dishes make themselves so at home in the Netherlands that they begin to disappear into the wallpaper. Saté ajam met pindasaus is one of them: at the verjaardagsborrel, the birthday drinks table, beside the barbecue, on the rijsttafel, the rice-table spread. Its season is not a month but an occasion: coals in the garden, rain against the window, a platter passed before anyone has found enough forks. Everyone reaches for it. Fewer people ask how an Indonesian skewer became a Dutch party reflex.

The name already tells you you're reading an old travel document. Saté is the Dutch spelling of Indonesian sate; ajam is the older Dutch-colonial way of writing ayam, chicken, because our j carries that y sound. Pindasaus, peanut sauce, is the Dutch confession: we wanted more of it, thicker and sweeter, a bowlful rather than a brushstroke. It is the Indo-Dutch table speaking: keep the charcoal skewer, make the sauce generous with ketjap manis, and let it cling. But let me tell you a secret: nobody asks for less sauce.

Cook it simply. Chicken thigh, not breast, because the grill is honest and breast dries before the edges darken. The marinade needs salt, sugar, garlic, coriander, and ketjap to make a lacquer; the sauce needs low heat because peanuts split when bullied. Grill over coals if you can, under a fierce grill if weather has other opinions, and bring the skewers to the table with more sauce than seems scholarly. History and cookery, they cannot be separated, but neither should anyone run out of pindasaus.