How to cook with peanut

Peanut and lime is a common pairing in Thailand and Vietnam. Photograph: Glow Cuisine/Getty Images

Peanut and carrot

The Flavour Thesaurusby Niki Segnit

Nigella Lawson gives a recipe for the?Rainbow Room's carrot and peanut salad, named in honour of the?restaurant where her mother ate something similar. The mix of ingredients might, she admits, sound odd, but it works, particularly if you're?brave with the vinegar: its astringency cuts through the oiliness of the nuts and, in combination with sweet carrot, gives the whole thing a mouthwatering quality that I associate with lime-juicy Asian salads. Coarsely grate 4 carrots and mix them with 75g salted peanuts, 2 tbsp red wine vinegar, 2 tbsp groundnut oil and?a few drops of sesame oil. Eat?immediately.

Peanut and beef

In common with Indonesian satay, in Peru the term anticucho refers to the process of cooking skewered meat over a grill, rather than to the ingredients used. That said, ox heart is the usual meat of choice, although beef is becoming more prevalent. Either way, the meat is marinated in vinegar, garlic, chilli, cumin and oregano, as it is in Bolivian anticuchos, but with the addition of thick peanut and chilli sauce on the side. In both versions, there may also be a few baby potatoes threaded on to the skewer. The combination of beef, peanut and potatoes may put you in mind of Thai massaman curry. David?Thompson says that this peanut-enriched sauce, thick with potatoes and meat (not always beef – lamb and duck are frequent alternatives), is the?most laborious of all the Thai curries?–?and the most delicious.

Peanut and lamb

In Bolivia they pair lamb with peanut in a soup or stew. In west Africa, peanut and lamb might turn up in a mafe and in Thailand in a massaman curry (see above). Small pieces of lamb might be threaded on to a skewer, grilled and served with a peanut sauce in a south-east Asian satay. In the west we have come to expect satay accompanied by a?peanut sauce, but in Indonesia it might come served with kecap manis or a mixture of tomato and chilli. As to the satay itself, anything goes: lamb, goat, chicken, beef, seafood, minced duck, ox offal, water buffalo, tofu, or pretty much anything you can?thread on a stick.

Peanut and lime

Packets of peanuts flavoured with lime, or lime and chilli, are popular in Mexico, where you can also buy them fresh from a street vendor, fried in their skins in pork fat and scooped, still hot, into a cup with a squeeze of lime juice. Peanut and lime is also a very common pairing in Thailand and Vietnam, where it is used to garnish noodle dishes, soups and salads. Like the vinegar in Nigella Lawson's Rainbow Room carrot and peanut salad (see left), the astringent juice provides a great counterpoint to the fattiness of the nuts.

Peanut and cucumber

In India, khamang kakdi combines peeled, diced cucumber; roasted, crushed peanuts; finely chopped fresh?green chilli and grated coconut. It's dressed with lemon juice, salt, sugar and cumin, or sometimes an oil?containing mustard seeds that's been heated until the seeds pop and?release their flavour. Serve as a?chutney.

This is an edited book extract from The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit. To order a copy for ￡12.99 with free UK p&p (saving ￡6), go to guardianbookshop.co.uk

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