Tag: low carb

The Turk’s Shish Kebab

If you happened to be driving U.S. Highway 63 from Rochester, Minnesota, to Ashland, Wisconsin, on April 21, 1957, you might have wondered why there were so many cars parked on the shoulder of the highway north of Hayward. Some sort of celebration, you would have concluded as you passed the full parking lot at The Turk’s Inn. After all, it was Easter Sunday, and people were probably celebrating the holiday.

One of your passengers might have glimpsed a short man with a fez on his head in front of a large brick barbecue just south of the building. If the wind was from the east, you might even have smelled the wonderful aroma of meat and vegetables cooking over an open fire. George the Turk was cooking shish kebab!

Hundreds of people used to reserve a table for Easter Sunday shish kebab a year in advance. Served with bread, salad, and pilaf, George’s shish kebab was an Easter Sunday favorite with people from all of northwest Wisconsin. I have often wished that I had George’s recipe.

Now, thanks to my sister Barbara, I do. Barb likes to play golf and lives in Hayward, Wisconsin. When I found a little cookbook, Vol. II Treasured Recipes–from the Kitchens of Members and Friends of the Hayward Women’s Golf Club, at the Goodwill store in Stillwater, Minnesota, I thought that she might enjoy it. The book was published in 1977 and includes recipes by many prominent Hayward ladies. In what became one of her Christmas presents she found George the Turk’s recipe for shish kebab.

The book credits the recipe to Marge, the daughter of George and “Ma” Gogian, from the Turk’s Inn at Hayward, Wisconsin. Here it is.

INGREDIENTS:

1 leg of lamb (2 lbs. meat cut in cubes)
3/4 cup sherry (Amontillado or dry sherry)
1 tsp. lemon juice
1/2 tsp. garlic salt or 1/2 tsp. salt and 1/8 tsp. garlic powder
1 T oregano
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 medium onions (about 3 inch diameter)
2 medium green bell peppers
12 small tomatoes (about 1 inch diameter)
6 skewers

PROCEDURE:

Trim the fat and gristle from the lamb. Remove the bone and cut the meat into one inch cubes. Clean and finely chop one of the onions. Put the meat with the chopped onion, wine, lemon juice and seasonings into a resealable plastic bag. Marinate overnight in the refrigerator, turning the bag a few times to make sure all the meat is coated with marinade.

When you are ready to start cooking the shish kebab, fire up your grill or light the charcoal to make a hot fire.

Clean and quarter the second onion and separate the pieces into layers. Wash the peppers and remove the stem, seeds and white membrane. Cut the peppers into two inch pieces. Wash the tomatoes.

Drain the marinade from the bag into a small saucepan and bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer the marinade for a few minutes to make the basting sauce. If there is not enough liquid, add a little more sherry. Remove the sauce from the heat.

Load the skewers as follows: Start with a lamb cube, then pieces of onion and green pepper, another cube of lamb, then a tomato followed by another cube of lamb, pieces of onion and green pepper and another cube of lamb. Continue alternating the meat and vegetables until you have one-sixth of the meat on each skewer.

Broil over a hot grill, turning and basting the meat and vegetables often. Cook until the meat is nicely browned and sizzling. Serve with rice pilaf.

NOTES: Marge advised “If lamb is tough, sprinkle with lemon juice.” but since I do not know how to determine if the meat is tough without cooking and eating it, I always add a little lemon juice. Lamb is seldom tough, but the lemon juice is insurance and adds a little extra zip to the flavor.

Since the Turk’s Inn was cooking for hundreds of guests, Marge’s recipe for a family dinner is, as my sister Barb says, “a little vague” about exact quantities and how the skewers were loaded. Barb remembered that two skewers were plated with the pilaf for an order, so each diner would get three tomatoes. I have adjusted the quantities to make four generous servings.

Barb also noted, “Marge would get upset often when the tomato would drop off the skewers, typical of grilling them with the meat as it took longer for the meat to grill than the veggies.” Many grilling recipes suggest grilling tomatoes on a separate skewer, so they can be cooked for a shorter time than the meat. If you fear tomatoes on the floor, you might want to try this. Firm tomatoes cut into one-inch pieces work for this recipe too, though they don’t look so nice on the skewers.

George always grilled shish kebab over charcoal, but a gas grill would probably work just as well.

I had shish kebab at the Turk’s Inn only a couple of times, and both times it was served with the, which is made with bulgar or coarsely cracked wheat. However, George and Ma both knew I really liked that pilaf, so they may have substituted it for rice pilaf.

Vegetarian Vegetable Soup

When you have a vegetarian for a grandson, it’s important to have a few dishes that a vegetarian will enjoy. I like vegetables, but I think of them as side dishes, or as I tell Will, our grandson, “I love vegetables, right next to the meat.” He doesn’t appreciate my humor. Seriously, however, I think of soups as a way to enhance the flavor of both the meat and the vegetables by cooking them together with different herbs and spices.

People have been making soups with meat and vegetables for thousands of years but sometimes there’s no meat to toss in the pot. The birds and big game elude the hunter and the fisherman comes home empty-handed. However, even the slowest hunter-gatherer (or his mate) was usually able to find some nourishing vegetables that couldn’t fly or run too fast or dodge the net. A few roots, leaves, seeds or fruits boiled in a pot of water could make a pretty satisfying meal.

Today, we have access to a wider variety of ingredients in supermarkets which makes it easy to create delicious soups without having to search for vegetables on windy prairies or in damp forests. The ingredients below are all available in any supermarket at very reasonable prices.

Recently I showed Will a quart package of vegetable broth in the pantry and asked him if he wanted to come over for a lesson on how to make vegetarian vegetable soup. He was eager to join Grandpa in the kitchen.

I chose vegetables that he likes and let him do the work of putting the soup together. I also listed four optional ingredients that he might want to add. He was positive that we should include tomatoes, so a half hour before dinner, we added two cups of cherry tomatoes that Jerri had chopped and frozen last summer. The soup was delicious, and five of us emptied the pot.

INGREDIENTS:

2 T olive oil
1 small onion (2 inches in diameter)
2 cloves garlic
2 small thin-skinned potatoes (2 inches in diameter)
3 medium carrots
2 medium parsnips
2 medium turnips (1 1/2 inches in diameter)
2 or 3 ribs of celery
4 cups vegetable broth
2 cups water
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
1/4 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. basil
2 cups chopped tomatoes
2 or 3 T cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup cold water

PROCEDURE:

Cut off the stem and root ends of the onion and remove the papery outer layer. Cut the onion in half lengthwise. Holding one half with the cut side down on a cutting board, cut the onion into roughly quarter inch slices, then cut across to make a quarter inch dice. Repeat with the other half. Set the chopped onion aside in a small bowl.

Cut the ends off two cloves of garlic and treat them like the onion, except dice them into very small pieces. This is called mincing a vegetable. Put the minced garlic into the bowl with the onion.

Use a larger bowl to hold the rest of the vegetables.

Wash the potatoes and dice them in nearly the same way as you did the onion: Cut them in half, then cut each half into half-inch slices and make a half inch dice. With thin-skinned potatoes such as reds or Yukon Golds, you do not need to peel them. If you have potatoes with thicker skins, peel them if you want.

Peel or scrape the carrots. Remove the tops and the bottom scar of the root. If the carrots are no more than a half-inch in diameter, carefully chop them into quarter to half-inch slices. If they are larger, cut them in half lengthwise, then into half-inch pieces. Put the chopped vegetables in a bowl and set it aside.

Parsnips and turnips sold in supermarkets are usually waxed, so you definitely need to peel them before dicing. Wash the celery ribs with a vegetable brush, remove any bad parts and chop the ribs into half-inch pieces. Add these vegetables to the bowl with the carrots and potatoes.

You are done chopping.

Put two tablespoons of olive oil in a soup pot or Dutch oven over low heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook slowly, stirring often, for three or four minutes until the onion begins to turn translucent.

Stir in the rest of the vegetables along with the broth, water and spices. Turn the heat to medium to bring the pot to a boil, then reduce the heat to very low and simmer the soup, covered, for thirty to forty-five minutes. Add two cups of chopped or diced tomatoes and simmer for an additional half an hour.

Dissolve two or three tablespoons of cornstarch in a quarter cup of cold water and stir it into the soup. Stir and cook three or four minutes until the starch is cooked and the broth has thickened slightly.

Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Serve with bread for lunch or a light dinner or as a first course to be followed by an entrée.

NOTES: As he was peeling the carrots, Will said, “This is a boring, repetitive job.” He was right, but somebody has to do it. I had already included an encouraging note to bolster the cook’s morale: “You are done chopping.” I did assist with the parsnips and turnips.

You can of course buy pre-chopped vegetables fresh or frozen, but I can guarantee that your soup won’t taste as good as one made with vegetables fresh from the garden or market. Part of the reason, I think, is that each vegetable ends up being chopped a little differently when done by hand in the kitchen, so the soup is more interesting to the eye and the tongue.

When we tasted the soup just before serving, I asked Will to tell me what he thought. “I think it needs more pepper,” he declared and ground another eighth teaspoon into the pot. I would have done the same. He’s on his way to becoming a cook!

With a little nervousness I decided to introduce Will to bread baking before we started the soup. He followed the recipe for Mom’s Dough Gods, which makes a single loaf of white bread that he turned into a dozen and a half dinner rolls that were perfect. Not only a cook, but a baker as well!

Feel free to adapt this recipe to your tastes, but I strongly suggest that you use a variety of vegetables. In particular, at least one parsnip and one turnip lend a depth and complexity to a vegetarian soup that is usually provided by meat or meat stocks. Include them the first time you make this soup. If you absolutely can’t tolerate one of them, leave it out next time. On the other hand, you might want to add another vegetable. If I had known that Will now likes rutabagas, we would have included a small one in his first soup. Rutabagas are wonderful in soup.

If you have a twelve-year-old grandson or granddaughter that you want to introduce to the wonders of cooking, this is a good dinner combination to start with.