I was sent a copy of Saving Dinner: The Menus, Recipes, and Shopping Lists to Bring Your Family Back to the Table to review. The book is a collection of weekly menus, organized seasonally, complete with categorized shopping lists and good clear directions. Each individual recipe is clearly detailed as well, along with serving suggestions and nutritional information. There are six recipes for main dishes each week. At this point in my life, I would never follow anyone’s menu for an entire week. Heck, I can barely follow a recipe without tweaking it! However, when I was first learning to cook, books like this gave me some great ideas on how to plan a week’s worth of meals. I think even experienced cooks can learn some great new recipes here and get some good menu ideas.
Last night I made some beef kebabs, adding some mushrooms, onions, green pepper and cherry tomatoes to the skewers.
I marinated the beef in the recipe from Saving Dinner but used this Food Saver vacuum marinating dish to speed up the process. I also marinated the veggies for an hour or so in some vinaigrette.
Beef and Vegetable Kebabs
Ingredients
Meat and Marinade
- 3/4 cup dry sherry
- 1/2 cup soy sauce
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 3 cloves garlic, pressed
- 2 tsps ground ginger
- 1 onion, minced I left this out
- 2-3 pound flank steak or top round or chuck, trimmed of fat and cut in 1″ cubes
Vegetables and Marinade
- 1 cup vinaigrette
- onion wedges
- cherry tomatoes
- green and/or red pepper slices
- mushrooms
Instructions
- Mix the steak marinade ingredients in a small bowl. Cut up your beef and put in a shallow dish and cover with the marinade. Cover and refrigerate for 3 hours or overnight.
- Marinate the vegetables in a simple oil and vinegar dressing while the meat marinates.
- If you’re using wooden skewers, soak in water at least half an hour before cooking.
- Thread the meat and vegetables on the skewers and cook on the grill 8-12 minutes, depending on how well you like your meat done.
Goes great with rice.
Here are the week’s menu suggestions for the week that includes the kabobs.
- Restaurant Style Chinese Chicken
- Poached Salmon with Creamy Horseradish Sauce
- Cincinnati Chili
- Great Greek Salad
- Beef Kabobs
- Lemon Roast Chicken
There are also do-ahead tips, a nice section of side dish recipes at the back, and a section on freezer cooking with four mini-sessions of chicken, beef, pork and shrimp recipes. (The freezer recipes are not casseroles and stuff you just reheat, but dinner “kits” of things like marinated chicken or chicken with artichoke sauce, shrimp creole and pork fajitas. When I used to use my freezer more, that’s exactly what made the most sense to me. I didn’t want to reheat frozen casseroles and call it dinner.)
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