A Dot Of Dash

One of my five kids is in town for a rare visit - so of course off comes the grill cover for a quick one, and off to SuperTarget, hopefully to find a little kosher London Broil and some chicken quarters.

It's mixed grill time! But it's got to be simple. No time to marinate for even an hour or two... or preferably longer ... as much as that makes for great chicken.

First, though, comes the question of planning out some side dishes. This time we're talking really time challenged and thus basic. So for starters, a simple spinach salad (baby spinach, aragula, carrots, sliced red onion and sliced mushrooms) topped with some croutons and a choice of dressings.

On the side, super simple but super yummy roasted onions. Nothing at all to do but make an X in the stem end, wrap in foil, and toss on the Coleman grill while its warming up. And then wait another quarter hour - or more - at up to 600F - until the onions get soft. Now just about any kind of onion will work, but the dish does become super-special with sweet onions such as Vidalia (my favorites).

Nothing intricate about the rest of the meal.

The only thing on the chicken was a powdering of one little secret ingredient. Okay, not a secret. I used Mrs. Dash. (A dot of dash, if you will.) Then on the already-hot grill the chicken goes, turn the heat way down, and cook. With luck there won't be enough chicken fat dripping to cause flames that immolate dinner.

As for the London Broil - I'd personally like to see the brand of glatt kosher meat that our Target sells slice its London Broil a bunch thicker than they do. What I did get was adequate, but when the meat is thinner one must be careful to rescue it from the grill before its overdone. Of course my wife and I disagree on what done means - she likes it more done, I like it so rare that a good vet could almost bring it back to life.

But there it is - a really basic, but really nice, mixed grill.

Ah, and to wash it down, some brewski. This time a really tasty light ale (I'm not into most American beers, rather preferring something with more body such as ale - and puh-lease don't ever suggest to me a "light beer" -- that's dishwater). We're drinking 5 Barrel Pale Ale from the O'Dell Brewing Co. in Fort Collins, Colorado.

The simplest mixed grill - easy and delicious

SuperShishka on Regal Rice

Okay Kosher Kooking fans, its Wednesday. And on Wednesday, if we can, we make some kind of nice meat, preferably on the grill. In Israel that's "al ha aish," and practically a religious ritual. Yum.

The idea is that we make meat for Shabbat ... so that takes care of Friday night and Shabbat daytime (perhaps a Cholent or Hamin, which I'll talk about in some other post or seventeen), with most likely leftovers for Sunday and maybe even Monday (for those who wanna eat old Cholent, which I suggest you just put into the blender, call refried beans, and feed to the the cat, who probably won't eat it any more than I'm willing to eat refried beans. Can you believe they even sell KOSHER refried beans these days? Yucccch.).

All of which leaves Thursday ... when we don't really want to make meat, because Shabbat is coming in less than 24 hours ... and Tuesday. But since perhaps we just had meat on Monday (especially those who eat refried beans and risk GAS in the ...), the next day isn't our choice for another meat meal. So that leaves Wednesday for our weekly non-Shabbat meat bonus.

Perhaps some day when I earn a better living we'll have meat more often, but really we should be thankful for the twice a week we do cook dead cows and chickens (and we'd cook freshly deceased lamb too, if the butcher in our city knew anything about meat).

So for this week's meat I'm off to Target - the local SuperTarget, that wonderful emporium of all good things to buy, including in our neighborhood a small supply of Glatt Kosher meat (Solomon's) in vacuum packs. Generally, the meat is good - hormone free, it says, etc - and less expensive than our lone Kosher fresh meat store, by about 25% for the beef cubes I find on the shelf (although somehwat more pricey for rib steaks).

Please forget all the other yummy things that go into a REAL 'al ha aish,' ranging from exotic stuff like liver and kosher heart, to various types of lamb and what have you. We can't get most of them, since we really don't have a kosher butcher where we live who knows anything about meat, so that stuff is never even ordered. Not that its easy to find in the U.S. of A. at all these days (gee, chicken feet in chicken soup....anyone remember that?).

Anyway, the main dish is to be based on the beef cubes ... although I might note that Solomon's has packed a healthy amount of beef shreds and what have you into their stew pack. But no matter, I can thread them on a skewer.

The only big question is what to make - perhaps Shishlik, or maybe a ShishKabab. The big difference, if anyone isn't clear on the issue, being that Shishlik is all beef, marinated in a secret sauce. ShishKaBab includes veggies strung out on the skewer in between the pieces of meat - marinated in a secret sauce. (Okay, you could just buy a marinade in the super and forget the 'secret.' Lots of brands are kosher these days. But except for Mrs. Dash, every marinade I see on the shelf here has about half a daily dose of sodium in each tablespoon - and a tablespoon is hardly the amount of a REAL serving. My cardiologist simply would NOT approve.)

Thanks to the local supermarket having tiny tomatoes and green peppers on sale (at a far less than SuperTarget charges for veggies), the choice is ShishKaBab or, as I'd call it since I use a secret marinade, SuperShishka. (That's Shishka, mind you, not Shiksah. I do not dream of including gratuitous insults on this blog. Which, of course doesn't exclude snide comments about those who don't understand the beauty of lamb -- After all, Moshe was a shepherd, Yosef was a shepherd. They weren't cowboys.)

So, step one is marinating the meat in my secret marinade, for about two hours or so.

Okay, I just can't keep a secret. The marinade is made of some crushed garlic (LOTS of crushed garlic), paprika (sweet Hungarian, if you please, not the hot stuff), olive oil (did I mention Extra Virgin?), a bit of rice Vinegar (okay, you could use another type of vinegar, but the taste is a bit strong for some folk), some Tamari (i.e. fancy Soy Sauce), and some red wine. Ah, you ask, which red wine. Remember that bottle of red wine you bought (or your guests brought) for last Shabbat that you really didn't like all the much? Well, now is the time to use up some of what's left of it. (In some future post I'll talk about why NEVER to use the swag they sell as "cooking wine.")

Before getting to the rest of the meal ... which I work on while the meat is marinating ... once the meat is about ready, string it on skewers with your choice of veggies ... mine was the aforementioned little tomatoes, pieces of green pepper, and chunks of Vidalia Onion (my favorite). Eventually, the skewers will go on my oversized grill - a Coleman behemoth big enough for a crowd, which is certainly overkill for the two of us right now but great for when we have a crowd, such as on Hol Hamoed Succot, Yom Ha'atz Ma'Ut, July 4, Memorial Day, and any other Jewish and/or American holidays when we can justify a big BBQ (and if anyone in the Kosher Kommunity has any problems with celebrating both, I happen to be a U.S. Army combat veteran, and have kids in the Israeli Army, went to public school and college in the U.S., and hold dual citizenship, and so I have the right - and obligation - to celebrate both. With a BBQ.).

Anyway, as anybody can tell you, the ideal base for ShishKaBob is a bed of rice preferably, in my opinion, a rice pilaf. Here's how I made mine.

While my rice was cooking .... Uncle Ben's whole grain brown rice (OU certified) ... in our old decrepit rice cooker (we bought a nice new Aroma rice cooker, but it shorted out after less than a year, and the "warranty" required a receipt we didn't have and beside that mailing costs and fees were almost as high as we paid in the first place) ... I sauteed some veggies to blend in to create a pilaf.

The rice, by the way, was cooked with some pareve phony 'chicken' soup. Shame on me ... enough salt again in just one spoonful to raise my blood pressure, but the flavor was the goal and our rice cooker is pareve, so real chicken soup wasn't an option. As for the veggies, sauteed in olive oil, I chose chopped up carrots, chopped up Vidalia Onion (did I say it was my favorite?), chopped green pepper, and a generous dollop of garlic. In the end, the sauteed veggies were simply mixed with the rice after it was finished cooking, creating my Regal Rice Pilaf.

With the ShishKaBob ready to go on the rice, all that was missing for a really nice meal was a salad. So I cheated, and bought some packaged greens (with a hechsher, I might add) to serve as the salad base. The result was: Baby spinach, shredded carrots, raddichio, sliced red onion, sliced white mushrooms, and some fresh thyme. At the table, some croutons for those who want them, and a choice of dressings.

And might I suggest a soft semi-dry red to go with the meal?

The Kosher Kook Prepares To Serve His SuperShishka