The greatest reward for me as an up and coming ( ?! maybe!?) chef is seeing people not only enjoying my food, but also appreciating each other's company just as much if not more than the actual meal. Despite both of these joys, there exists an even more exciting gusto, a treat that comes from cooking WITH other people, especially with my sensational cousins.
The extended Burke Family just returned from our annual two weeks in Avalon, New Jersey. I was blessed with fifteen first cousins all of whom are more like siblings to me than cousins, and we get along swimmingly. Last Tuesday we held the first annual "Kids Cook Dinner" night (maybe someday the adults will realize that the "kids" average an age of 23).
I am totally one for quick and easy, (yet interesting) meal preps. However, when working with several cooks, it's important to create a moderately tedious and task oriented meal to prepare. This is one of the reasons why we chose a meal that would require several small tasks, such as chopping, skewering, and marinating, so that everyone could like play a part in the preparation.
The girls volunteered the better part of our beach morning and decided ventured to the food store to buy all the ingredients: chicken, skewers, veggies, marinade, and salad mixings.
For dinner, we really wanted to choose a meal that could accomodate most, if not all of our family's taste buds. The Burke family are pretty simple eaters. Although this does not make me adore them any less, it does drive me a little nuts to endure a few weeks without any kitchen creativity. I usually start craving something weird like seaweed salad. Just kidding. . . or am I?
We spent the morning skewering the chicken and the vegetables, which really takes patience, despite the simplicity of the task. As far as how much meat and veggies to buy, I like to average about 1/4 lb. of meat per person. Just multiply that by how many people you plan to feed. We calculated 7 lbs of chicken for about 26 people (we were missing a few team members that night).
In keeping with the summer theme, we decided to choose multicolored vegetables. We picked colorful peppers (green, yellow, red, orange), mushrooms, squash, and onions, although you can really pick any vegetable.
You can expect that each person will eat one or two skewers. We skewered the vegetables alternating kind and color. One pepper can spread out along at least 8 skewers, or 4 if you put 2 peppers on each skewer. You can do all preparation early in the day and let it sit during the afternoon. Another reason why this is the perfect beach meal! Later on, when the boys saw that some grilling needed to be done, and some beers needed to be opened, they just had to lend a hand. Cousin Patrick, the lean mean grilling machine, manned the grill. We all kept him company as we listened to music provided by my brother, Joe. However, the grill started to flame. Luckily it became a team effort and my dad came to the rescue.
Neither the barbacue and teriayki chicken skewers, nor the fresh grilled vegetables came from my Kitchen Whimsy- mind. However, this meal needed a blog-post because recipe sharing is not the only thread to link cooks. Rather, there exists a universal truth that governs all cooking laws. That truth is the reality that no meal can ever be totally rewarding and inspiring for a cook unless it brings together smiling faces, and warm conversation. That was what we all felt on that Tuesday night.
