The queen & her sateh

A few years ago, my mother nicknamed my grandmother 'the queen'. With good reason, of course: my gran gran doesn't have a very royal appearance, but she is the queen of her kitchen. She celebrated her 78th birthday last Saturday, in style of course, with an old fashioned barbecue. My cousin had organised the entire party. There was beer, Russian salad, lontong and... sateh.
For those of you with no immediate knowledge of the Indonesian kitchen: sateh {pronounced SAH-tay, the Dutch usually pronounce it sah-TAY but they're wrong, trust me} are pork skewers {or chicken, or shrimp, or goat, but pork has my preference}.
The pork is cut in pieces of about two by one centimeter, and then marinated according to my gran's recipe, in a mixture of ketjap manis {the Indonesian version of soy sauce, a little thicker than say Chinese soy sauce}, chopped garlic, a slice of lemon, some black pepper and a snif of vetsin. After about two hours, the meat is ready to be skewered. In my family we use bamboo sticks to do this. The sticks are quickly put into ice cold water, after which they're good to use!
Since the weather was rather nice past Saturday, we were able to roast the sateh on charcoal, which definitely improves the taste. Sateh can also be prepared in the oven but nothing beats charcoal. Lovely, lovely.

To do it right, though, the sateh needs to be served with peanut sauce, lontong {= sticky rice} and some veggies. Delicious. It immediately reminds me of home, of sunny days, and of course, of the queen. :D