Beef Kebabs

1kg topside; baby squash; zucchini; haloumi cheese; cherry tomatoes; mushrooms; olive oil; thyme; mustard; red wine; basil; garlic; pepper

These were for a BBQ as a way of circumventing the need to make a salad. They could also be made fairly quickly as I had about 20 minutes to make them after running late from a 4WD/ skin diving adventure up to the wreck of the Alkimos where we bashed around the dunes scaping our way through sand tracks.

I wasn't sure what to do for a marinade so I ended up with about 4 different ones

Meat Cut up into bite sized squares. The marinade was a bodge of what was available. To get the minced garlic working more quickly into the oilve oil I put them both into a bowl and zapped them for 40 seconds in the micro to save messing about with a pan. Then a tablespoon of thyme, a big teaspoon of mustard, and some some red wine. I sprinkled some pepper over the beef them mixed it in with the marinade.

Veges Cut the zucchini and squash to approximately match the meat in height. Also cut both ends off each squash so it fitted more snugly to its neighbour on the skewer and gave it a head start in the cooking process by microwaving it for a minute. Then I poured some olive oil and lemon juice over both of them.

Quartered two white onions. Cut the mushrooms to size and splashed some olive oil over them and some pepper. Haloumi cheese is new to me, but I got some because I heard it doesn't melt like other cheeses, which would be a good thing. It's a greek cheese and was like a smoother less salty feta. I cut it into slices and put it in with the tomatoes and some olive oil and basil.

Assembly Everything marinated away happily while we drove to the South Perth foreshore. For the skewers, I used long stainless steel jobbies which meant not having to worry about soaking wooden ones. Ingredient were skewered at random and cooked, free of charge thanks to the kind ratepayers of South Perth, on the barbie until the meat was dome.

I then just deskewered them and let people help themselves. They worked well as a tasty square meal on a stick with a Pemberton pinot noir and a stubbie of Pike's Oakbank beer.

The haloumi didn't melt.