Lamb Kebabs

I generally associate lamb with gyros – and while they are delicious, they aren’t the most high class addition to a dinner table.  Plus, I don’t have a spit that I can roast and baste an enormous wheel of meat on.  I live in my apartment, and am highly limited by the size of my apartment and my itsy bitsy kitchen.  This is a lamb recipe that’s really really excellent.  If you don’t like lamb (my friend Emily doesn’t eat ‘baby animals’), you can use steak with similar results, but the combination of spices here is really well suited to lamb.

This recipe is really really flavorful, and incredibly easy.  You can grill it for the best results, but I just use a grill pan on my stove.  Before I had a grill pan, I got great results just using a regular frying pan.  I don’t measure the ingredients, I just use my hand.  I think that a palm-ful is essentially a Tablespoon, but I can’t promise, so just use your palm to be sure.  Plus, it’s cooking, not baking, so it’s not so important to have the EXACTLY right amount of each ingredient.

Ingredients:

• Lamb
• Cumin
• Coriander
• Tumeric
• Cinnamon
• Paprika
• Steak Grill Seasoning
• Pepper
• Garlic Powder
• Olive Oil

Vegetable Skewers:

• Bell Peppers (any color)
• Yellow Onions
• Olive Oil
• Salt and Pepper

Directions:

1. Trim 1 lb of lamb, and cube into skewer sized pieces
2. Soak the wooden skewers in water
3. In a bowl, put 1/4 C olive oil
4. Add 1 palmful of cumin and a palmful of coriander (equal amounts so that they offset one another!)
5. Add a smaller palmful of Tumeric (it will dye your hand a little yellow)
6. Add 1/4 tsp cinnamon
7. Add a palm-ful of grill seasoning
8. Add 1 tsp paprika
9. Stir together the spice mixture in the oil so that it makes a paste
10. Add the cubes of meat into the bowl, and toss to coat them with spices.  The oil is necessary because you use it in place of putting any oil on the grill, and it keeps the meat moist, and the flavors locked on.  Be sure to coat every piece well, add a bit of oil if the paste is too thick to spread.
11. Skewer the cubes of meat, leaving a pinkie-sized space between each piece
12. Make the grill hot – it should already be hot when you put the meat on
13. Allow it to cook for about 2-3 minutes on all four sides, rotating it as you cook.  I like it medium-rare, but everyone has their own meat preference.
14. Eat on Skewers, or take it off skewers and serve over cous cous or with vegetables.

To make the vegetable skewers:

1. Cut vegetables into uniform pieces, and toss them with olive oil, salt,and pepper
2. Skewer them, and grill them on all four sides, allowing them to get charred.
3. YUM!