Ground Beef Kabobs, Grean Beans with Tomatoes, and Hummus

Middle eastern ground beef kabobs was one of my favorite dishes growing up.    I like to make these kabobs a couple of times per year and usually on a weekend when I have more time to chop a lot of parsley! 

The kabobs are just ground beef mixed with chopped parsley, chopped onions sauteed in olive oil, garlic, and salt.   I use about a half cup of chopped parsley and a half cup of onion per pound of beef.   I mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl and then form the kabobs into little footballs.   I use about 2 oz of meat per kabob, so a pound will yield about 8 kabobs.  The kabobs are about 100 calories each.   Then I grill the kabobs over a charcoal grill.

The green beans and tomatoes is another recipe from my childhood, although I have made some modifications to this recipe.   I saute the beans in a little olive oil for about 5 to 7 minutes.   Then I add salt, pepper, and cumin and one 28oz can of diced tomatoes and let the beans and tomatoes simmer for a couple of hours on the stove before serving over rice.

My hummus recipe is online at myrecipes.com.   I have given my hummus recipe to several people over the years.    If you try it and you like it, please leave a comment for me on myrecipes.com.

Chicken Shawarma, Hummus and Jerusalem Salad

Chicken Shawarma, Hummus, and Jerusalem Salad is a family favorite.   Although, I ate very similar dishes growing up, the marinade is not a family recipe.   It is another Cooking Light recipe from myrecipes.com. 

I do use a family recipes for the Hummus and Jerusalem Salad, and I have posted these recipes on myrecipes.com

I wouldn't call this a low calorie dinner, but its not too bad.   Below is my calorie count for this dinner.

Food	Calories
4 oz of grilled Chicken	200
1/2 pita	83
1/2 cup of cooked rice	120
1/2 cup of Jerusalem Salad	50
1.5 oz of Hummus	120
Total	573

Middle Eastern Steak and Chicken Kabobs

I was hungry as I scanned through my list of recipes this afternoon to decide what to make for dinner.  It was almost two o'clock and I had not eaten lunch yet.   When I am really hungry something grilled, usually steak, always seems to get my attention.

I decided to make a middle eastern dinner tonight with grilled steak and chicken kabobs, Jerusalem Salad, plain rice, and hummus.    For the kabobs, I use a marinade recipe I got from a Cooking Light Chicken Shawarma recipe.    I made the steak kabobs using the same marinade back in Feburary.

 Jerusalem Salad

I started using my other charcoal grill a few days ago and I guess I am still getting used to it.   The cooking surface sits a little higher above the coals and this grill is a couple of inches larger in diameter.   I switched to this grill because I thought the increase in cooking surface area would work well with my method of pushing all the coals out to the outer edge of the grill as it would give me more cooking surface area not directly over the coals.   And while I do get more center area to work, I wasn't getting quite enough heat at the center and so the kabobs took more than twice as long to cook and I got impatient and took everything off, moved the coals back to the middle and then left the meat on the grill just a few minutes too long resulting in some charring.   The meat was a little dry but the the flavor was really good.   Well, live and learn, I guess. 

My wife usually puts the Jerusalem salad together.   I did all the prep work for her so she could throw it all together.   The salad was delicious.  And the hummus always turns out great. 

Hummus

Ground Beef Kabobs and Jerusalem Salad

My house guests were back in town tonight and came by for another dinner.   They stayed in San Francisco last night and had planned come back for dinner and to stay the night tonight.   The first night they were here, they were pretty tired from the international flight.   They went to bed right after dinner, so the next morning I invited them over for dinner and stay the night another night before the ventured off to other parts of the country.

For dinner tonight, I made Ground Beef Kabobs, Jerusalem Salad, Hummus, and Rice.   This is a family dinner I had many times growing up.   Jerusalem Salad is a well known dish with many variations.  If you google  "Jerusalem Salad" Recipe you get over 3000 search results.     My variation of this dish has the basic cucumber, tomato, and parsley and the dressing consists of salt, tahini, yogurt, and fresh lemon juice.

The dinner was pretty good.   I would have liked the kabobs to have a little more salt and be a bit more done in the middle.   The grill temp got too low towards the end of the cooking process.

After dinner we sat outside around the fire pit and drank wine and told stories.   Before Monday night, I had not seen my friends for 18 years.   I hope we will be able to get together again before another couple of decades go by.

I had planned to have leftovers from this dinner, but we ate too much, so I will have to cook again tomorrow night.    I feel a chicken dish coming on...

Middle Eastern Steak Kabobs

We had a Middle Eastern dinner tonight.   I normally do not cook on Mondays but since today was a holiday and my schedule is a little different this week, I decided to cook Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday this week and have pizza on Friday night. 

I grilled steak kabobs marinated in curry powder, olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, cumin, and salt.   My 9 year old daughter loves hummus and helped me make it.   My wife made some plain rice.   Our daughter likes only "Mommy rice" and is suspicious of "Daddy rice."   I have a tendency to let the rice cook a little too long or I don't put enough water in sometimes and a few crunchy or not fully cooked pieces of rice are unacceptable to a 9 year old.   I also made a salad with tomato, cucumber, garlic, fresh parsley, olive oil and lemon juice to go along with the meal.   I had only one good fresh tomato (I thought I had more but they had gone bad) so I included some canned diced tomatoes which kind of overpower the dish a little bit.   I would normally put tahini and yogurt in this salad as well, but I forgot to buy yogurt at the store.

Overall, the meal was really good and the kabobs were probably the best steak kabobs I have ever made.  This is the first time I have used this marinade.  I got the marinade from a Cooking Light shawarma recipe.   I used the same marinade for some chicken kabobs a few weeks ago and realized the flavor was very close to the kabobs from Dish Dash, one of my wife's favorite restaurants.   In fact, during dinner tonight, she said, "Mmm... these kabobs are as good as Dish Dash!"   That's pretty much the ultimate compliment I think, when anything I make turns out as good as a dish from a restaurant I really like.   I feel like I've accomplished something when that happens.

I cooked enough that we can have left over kabobs, rice, hummus, and salad tomorrow night. 

I usually shop at Whole Foods.    I try to use fresh, organic ingredients as much as possible.   For the kabobs I used New York Strip.   The steaks were very lean and very expensive at $25 per pound!   The price of beef at Whole Foods has gone up a LOT in the past year.    I have cut back on the amount of beef we eat, not just due to the price, but also because chicken and lean cuts of pork are much healthier.

Occasionally, I will make a vegetarian dinner, but I generally do not enjoy meatless dishes as much.   My wife and I were both vegetarians when we met and we maintained a strictly vegetarian diet for the first few years of our marriage.  I started getting interested in cooking during that time because I wanted to continue to be a vegetarian and also have good food that we enjoyed eating.   My cooking has improved a lot since then.  Even though I just follow recipes, I seem to be a lot better at having things turn out than in those earlier years.