New Standard Veggie Kebabs

It's summer, so odds are some or all of the following things are true:

• You can get lots of tasty vegetables for cheap
• It's too hot to cook inside
• You're going to a cookout
• You're throwing a cookout
• You've got vegetarian friends coming
• You are a vegetarian
• You're just too cheap to buy meat (actually these last two are season-independent, but whatever)

So you'd better have a good vegetable grilling option. The good news is, this recipe (which, as the title implies, has become my new standard both for cookouts and for dealing with vegetables when I don't have the time or brainpower to do anything fancy) is really all you need. I mean, if you want to get crazy grilling vegetables, don't let me stop you! In fact, invite me over so I can watch you grill them, and then eat the result! But this is easy, reliable, and so delicious you won't have any leftovers if you have guests. Which is a pity, because the leftovers are tasty cold.

This is so simple. Do I really need to do a post on this? You probably got the idea from the title, right? Chop some vegetables up, put them on a skewer, and grill them. But I know for me at least, it always helps to have a walkthrough, even - especially - for the most basic things. So here we go.



Ingredients

• Vegetables (onion I recommend having with everything since it caramelizes nicely and gives a savory flavor to its neighbors, summer squash of multiple varieties for extra color and flavor, mushroom another umami-intensive option, bell pepper also flavors its neighbors on the skewer, eggplant needs a long cooking time but absorbs flavor wonderfully, tomato not a vegetable but who cares, cauliflower tough to skewer but so worth it, potatoes or other root vegetables if they are small or par-cooked. Try others! If they work really well, tell me about it! If they fail spectacularly, tell me about that too!
• Olive oil
• Garlic
• Salt
• Spices (I like curry powder, thyme, and adobo. I bet you'd also have great results with dill, creole seasoning, maybe zaatar. Ooh, zaatar. I'm going to try that next time.)

You'll also need:

• Wooden skewers (You can use metal ones if you've got them, of course).
• A pastry brush

Instructions
Chop up your vegetables into large chunks; slightly larger than the size chunk you would like to eat off a skewer (since they're going to shrink as you cook them.

Start threading the vegetables onto the skewers. Try not to stab yourself. If you want very even cooking, you can separate the skewers by vegetable type, but personally I like to mix it up. Part of the joy of eating vegetables is that they mostly taste great in various stages of doneness, so adding that to the medley of flavors and textures you'll be creating just makes it more delightful. I like to include at least one chunk of onion on each skewer - it goes well with everything - but you should have more than enough vegetables to experiment.

Get a bowl and pour in about 1/4 cup olive oil - or however much you think it will take to brush your skewers with. Squeeze in a couple of garlic cloves and a pinch of salt, and stir around with your pastry brush.

Heat up your grill medium-hot. Pop your skewers onto the grill, and brush them with the garlic-oil mixture. Turn them over and brush them again. If the vegetables have started cooking while you were inside getting the oil, or the oven mitts, or something to put the cooked skewers on, that's OK. This is a very forgiving recipe; as long as you get the oil on sometime in the early cooking stage, it will be delicious.

What this recipe doesn't really forgive is ingredient quality. This is not really the place to use up the vegetables that are going to go bad if you don't use them tonight. I used an overgrown zucchini in this one (part of an experiment you'll read about in a few weeks time, if all goes well) and it came out too sweet-tasting and starchy.

Anyway, once you've brushed everything with oil, dust everything with your choice of spices. Here I've done curry on half and thyme on half.

Let grill for about half an hour or until vegetables are tender. You can eyeball this one. Watch out for the tomatoes sticking to the grill. Pull 'em off the grill and serve to your guests as is, or if you're spending a sad lonely evening like me, slide them off the skewers and save whatever you don't eat for later in the week!

Cost:
However much your vegetables cost. Let's see, here it's:
Eggplant:  $0.89
Zucchini: $0.50
Mushrooms: $1.00
Onion: $.10
Tomatoes: free! (garden for the win!)
Pepper: $.99
Total: $3.68
Serves: 3-6 depending on what else you're having.