What became a PB and J Night...

Over the past few years I have had some real flops in the kitchen where Papa John’s has ended up with a late night delivery to our house. There was the infamous night where the beer cheese soup never thickened, tasted terrible, and then I severely burned microwave popcorn… and there was the night where I very unsuccessfully attempted to make crepes… or the eggplant pasta sauce that was inedible (ended up at Surin that night)… well you get the picture. Tonight will get added to the list as a dinner that just didn’t turn out. Now this one is a little different from the others in that in hindsight I should have know from reading the recipe that it just wasn’t going to be very tasty. I made Cooking Light’s Sesame Shrimp Salad and as everyone (except my Mother who eats salad dry – no dressing) the salad dressing plays a fairly key role in the overall taste. Well, the main ingredient in the salad dressing for this salad is fish sauce. Now, I do eat and like fish sauce when it is a minor ingredient in a larger more complex sauce that is hot, but cold fish sauce as the main ingredient… just not my thing. Just the pungent smell is really enough to turn me off from the entire salad. Now, some people may think the salad is great and it did have redeeming qualities like the use of mint in the greens. As a whole though this just didn’t do it for us and I blame the dressing. We had PB and Js and they were tasty and didn’t smell like fish. Russ rates the salad a 5.

Shish Kebabs

Tonight is Bachelor night and Russ and I are hosting which means we are in charge of the entrée. Since the men have been more involved in entrees the last two times and steak has been involved Russ felt like he should fire up the Egg for tonight and red meat should somehow be involved. We decided that steak and chicken shish kebabs fit the bill. We have done kebabs before, but we still haven’t found a recipe that we love so we are trying a new one tonight for Emeril’s Wine Marinated Beef Kebabs.

Since the meat needs to marinate for 6 to 24 hours we went ahead and put it together last night, so that it can marinate overnight and all day today. We wanted to do steak and chicken even though the recipe only calls for steak. We looked around for a different marinade to use on the chicken, but in the end decided to use the same marinade for both. Russ started by cutting the steak (top sirloin) and chicken into large cubes. While I worked on mincing the garlic and gathering the herbs Russ tossed the meat with Emeril’s Essence seasoning in a large Ziploc bag. We then added soy sauce, red wine, red wine vinegar, Worcestershire, minced garlic, chopped fresh rosemary, and dried thyme (as our fresh thyme has dried out). When we got home from work tonight we put the wood skewers in water to soak. I then cut the onions, green pepper, and red pepper into large chunks. I washed the cherry tomatoes and cleaned the mushrooms and cut the tips of the stems off. The recipe does not call for marinating the vegetables at all, but we decided to throw them in for a little while until we were ready to skewer them. We did a mix on the skewers of chicken, beef, and veggies. Russ then grilled them on the Egg.

The shish kebabs were good, but not great. The first thing that we should have done differently is use a different cut of meat. We used top sirloin as the recipe had called for and it was a beautiful cut, but it was too tough for a kebab. I think next time we’ll try tenderloin when we do steak kebabs and see how that goes. The other thing we should have done differently is to not mix the chicken and steak on the skewers. The steak had to cook a little longer than it needed in order to have the chicken cook through. As far as the marinade we thought it was okay, but not aything super special or different. Russ and I both agreed that we liked it better on the chicken than on the steak which was surprising since the recipe is actually for beef. Overall Russ was fairly disappointed with the kebabs and gave them a 5.

Elizabeth and Seth were in charge of the sides and brought butter beans and roasted potatoes. They were both very yummy and I really liked the size of the potatoes. Elizabeth had them cut into bite size pieces which I loved! Emily and Dowe brought the appetizer and dessert. Emily made an excellent Baked Pimiento Cheese Dip which was very creamy and tasty with a kick to it. This is one that I will definitely keep in mind next time I need an appetizer. For dessert they brought a cute cookie cake which was devoured! As always it was a fun filled night with good friends, lots of food and drink, and another entertaining episode!

The rest of this week and the weekend already look to be filled with fun cooking and baking. We have several small, ripe green peppers in our garden that will show up soon. I also am very excited to have two and a half pecks of beautiful apples from an orchard where Russ, Cash, and I stopped at on our way home from Highlands, North Carolina. I am hoping to be able to have lots of time for baking with the apples this weekend!