Kebabs 101

Last week, I heard two different radio segments about kebabs and I was instantly inspired to whip some leftovers into something fancy. So, I defrosted a piece of meat I had in my freezer and took out the grouper from the previous night. I diced both, seasoned them with salt and pepper and placed them on skewers. Both segments had dispelled the soaking skewers in water theory so I opted not to do it. They said that the water is supposed to soak up the heat before it gets to the wood but every time I had tried it didn't work. Now I feel justified.

Then I took a squash from the garden, an onion and a red pepper, diced them and alternated those on skewers. Always cook meats together and vegetables together - this is because everything cooks at different times. I drizzled olive oil on those. I heated up the grill and stuck the vegetables on. This is an important lesson I learned - vegetables take much longer than meats. Once the vegetables looked like they were getting crispy, I stuck on the meat. Then the grouper when everything else looked about done. The grouper literally took about 3 minutes. Very easy and tasty.

So, I was thinking that with this it might be nice to have an aromatic rice. What is an aromatic rice? It's a rice lightly flavored with an herb. I had some leftover cilantro that I thought would taste good, at least in my mind. I found a few recipes on online and after having read through them I decided I could concoct my own recipe. So, here it is:

Chop abt 1/2 cup cilantro.
Juice 1 lime then zest and set aside
Mince 1 clove garlic.
In a sauce pan, saute garlic and rice in olive oil about 5 minutes. Use any rice - I used white. Rice is roughly 1 cup of rice to 2 cups of water.
Once the garlic is soft, add water/broth and lime juice. Let water boil, then reduce to simmer about 20 minutes. Essentially, make rice as you normally would.
When rice is done, mix in cilantro and lime zest and serve. You may need to salt & pepper to taste.


Dinner was delicious and CityBaby enjoyed it, too.