Recipe: Summer on a Stick

The flavors of a caprese salad are heavenly - fresh basil, fresh tomato and mozzarella.  To me, this flavor combination says summer!  There are so many fun ways of using these three ingredients: in pasta, combined as their own salad, or even on a pizza. Add a little summer sausage or salami, and you've got a real winner.  This makes a nice appetizer for a dinner al fresco, or a cute dish to take to a barbeque or outdoor picnic.  I've been known to skip the skewers and eat it as a light lunch.

Here's how you make it.  Its so simple, I feel wrong calling this a 'recipe.' 

Basic ingredients - determine how many skewers you'll be making and go from there:
   A chunk of mozzarella cheese
   Fresh cherry or grape sized tomatoes
   Summer sausage stick
   Several basil leaves
   Skewers
   Balsamic vinegar for drizzling

Cube your mozzarella cheese and the summer sausage into bite sized cubes, wash those tomatoes and rip off some basil leaves.

Optional step:  At this point, any furry friend in the house may be hovering around, hoping you'll drop some of that yummy sausage or cheese on the floor.  It's up to you to decide whether or not you want to share.  Not surprisingly, I caved.

Spike a sausage cube onto the skewer, then add mozzarella cube, a basil leaf (or suitably sized portion of a leaf), and finally a tomato.

Aren't they pretty?  If you use shorter skewers, you can reverse the order of ingredients and stand them up using the sausage cube as a base.  These are cute for entertaining.

For added flavor, you can drizzle balsamic vinegar over it all, but I skipped that step this time.  You can also skip the skewers altogether and toss the ingredients for more of a salad.  I make the pieces smaller when I do this, so you can get more than one ingedient in a bite.

The basil, tomato and cheese are always a crowd-pleasing flavor combination, and for the meat eaters a little summer sausage or salami adds that extra something.  Let me know if you try this - I'd love to hear how you like it!

Beef and Veggie Kabobs Recipe

My brother-in-law is a good cook. One of my all time favorite meals is his beef kabobs with yellow rice - I could eat it for hours (or until my stomach exploded from too much rice, kind of like how they tell you the pigeons will explode after consuming too much uncooked rice that had been thrown at a bride - wonder if the MythBusters have done an episode on that?!?!?).

I make a decent replica on the grill, but I don't grill in my ski coat, so this time of year, I just cooked the beef & veggies in a grill pan on the stove.  I used my favorite BBQ sauce - Sensuous Slathering Sauce from Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse, NY.  Its an awesome place - part biker bar, awesome music and of course with BBQ to die for.  Their sauces and some refrigerated BBQ entrees are available at Wegmans grocery stores in New York state, and maybe elsewhere, and of course their own website above.  If you are ever in Syracuse, you must, MUST go.  They also usually have a concession stand at the NY State Fair, so you can taste there too!  Their creole potato salad is the best potato dish I've ever tasted.

Here goes the recipe - serves four.

Approximately one pound beef, cubed
1 green pepper, cut into 1 inch pieces
1 onion, cut into 1 inch pieces
16 oz. fresh mushrooms (use them whole on kabobs, or chunk them for the grill pan)
8 oz. cherry or grape tomatoes (or cut up one large beefsteak sized tomato into pieces roughly the same as the other ingredients)
one family sized package of yellow rice

For grilling kabobs - just load up your skewers, brush on BBQ sauce, and grill till the meat is cooked to your liking. Prepare the rice as directed. Using full cherry or grape tomatoes reduces the messy factor, and they don't get mushy as quickly.

For grilling on the stove - use a grill pan or large skillet, on medium heat. Start the beef first, then add the veggies after about 10 minutes. Use a pastry brush to brush on BBQ sauce.

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Put the beef & veggies on a cheerful bed of yellow rice and enjoy!

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