Vegetarian skewers - some thoughts

"I'm not sure a tomato belongs on a kebab anyway. They refuse to turn when the kebab is rotated on the grill, burst and collapse into a red mush. Pointless." Nigel Slater

Now having a vegetarian granddaughter and some vegetarian friends, every now and then I have to think of some kind of skewer dish for them if the food I am cooking everybody else is for a BBQ or is the family's favourite kebabs. So when Yotam Ottolenghi's topic for his last week's newsletter was vegetarian kebabs I paid attention. Not just for the gorgeous two recipes on display - which I shall come to, but also for the words of advice he had about vegetarian skewers. And yes, these days mostly we use the term skewers because kebabs seems to be increasingly used for things I think of as fritters.

The dish shown here however is from Jamie Oliver and is simply called Vegetable kebabs but it does demonstrate these words from Ottolenghi - and the ones from Nigel Slater above:

"I see so many vegetable skewers that consist of: a courgette coin, a mushroom, lots of different sizes of red pepper chunk, repeat, maybe a wedge of red onion.

I’ve never fully understood the urge to do this - it’s a triumph of visual logic over cooking logic. Courgette, mushroom and pepper all need different things from the heat. By the time the pepper’s picked up any real char, the courgette has gone from crisp to sad and watery, and the mushroom is either underdone and spongy or shrivelled down to nothing. Three separate vegetables having three separate bad experiences, unified only by the stick" Yotam Ottolenghi

Jamie obviously doesn't seem to think so and neither does a vast portion of the recipe writing world out there. Feed in 'vegetable skewers' to Google Images and up comes an almost uniform version of the above. Which is undeniably good looking - but yes if you look closely the tomatoes are collapsing, the peppers are not charred and the zucchini 'coins' look a bit blah. I don't think there are mushrooms, but there are also chunks of haloumi - another vegetarian skewer favourite - with good reason - and I'm sure we have all been guilty of preparing a similar kind of skewer for our vegetarian guests.

Adam Liaw has this piece of advice which, whilst agreeing with Ottolenghi, his Marinated vegetable skewers seem at first site to do just the wrong thing:

"The key to these skewers is slicing everything very thinly. Big chunks of vegetable will cook too slowly on the barbecue, but when they're thinly sliced they will carry more of the marinade and cook more evenly." Adam Liaw/SBS

Which is sort of the same thing - and besides Nigel adds in this:

"Cooking something on a skewer, whether over a grill or in a heavy shallow pan, means the juices of each chunk of food baste the one next to it. The fact that the ingredients are close to one another brings about a marriage of flavours as the juices mix and mingle."

So what does Ottolenghi suggest? Well a number of things but he headlined his newsletter with this amazing looking Beetroot skewers with smoky chipotle and date glaze - the beetroot being the ready cooked vacuum packed variety. You marinate the beetroot slices in a mix of chipotle chilli paste, soy sauce and date syrup, fold them in half and thread on to skewers, grill and then brush the rest of the marinade over them before serving. Easy peasy. Although would you want so much beetroot all at once? I guess it would be worth a try - if you like beetroot - and of course you would be serving it with side dishes of some kind.

It does demonstrate the technique, which he recommends (as well as others) of restricting yourself to one ingredient. Something with which Nigel Slater concurs:

"A kebab is not a case of the more the merrier. Two ingredients is probably the maximum number you want to share a skewer. Each should have something to offer the other."

A technique that various others have taken up - and I have to confess - some of the more interesting ones - Crispy oyster mushrooms with crushed chickpeas - Ixta Belfrage/Sous Chef - the crushed chickpeas being an accompaniment that the finished skewers sit upon; Brussels skewers with peanut sauce - Ravinder Bhogal/Waitrose - now who would have thought of Brussels sprouts for a skewer dish - or cabbage? - Fried cabbage skewers with harissa butter sauce - Ben Williamson/delicious.; Pumpkin nam jim skewers - Charlotte Binns-McDonald/delicious.; Grilled celeriac skewers with golden syrup glaze - Rishim Sachdeva/ Great British Chefs; Courgettes, preserved lemons, miso, coriander seeds - Helen Graham/Instagram; Leeks, miso & mango chutney skewers - Helen Graham/Borough Kitchen

All of the above are basically one vegetable, but they are virtually all either marinaded, or brushed with a glaze - probably the marinade - or finally served by sitting on something else or with some kind of sauce - which Ottolenghi thinks is an essential part of the whole thing:

"When it comes to taking them to that next level, it’s really just about being prepared with a dressing - one good one, made in a big batch, that can do double duty across whatever’s coming off the grill."

Then there's cheese of course - the all-time favourite here being halloumi of course, although other suggested cheeses are paneer and kefalograviera, and I guess if you want to boost the protein in your offering then this is the way to go. And perhaps I should also include tofu here - not an appetising choice for me, but I will admit I've never tried it. It just doesn't appeal. You would have to pair it with something suitable however - some suggestions: Sticky sesame sugarsnap and halloumi skewers - Helen Graves/Waitrose; Korean-style mushroom and tofu kebabs - Waitrose; Padrón pepper and halloumi with sweet and smokey honey drizzle - Yotam Ottolanghi/Waitrose; Gundpowder paneer and potato skewers - Rukmini Iyer/The Guardian; Zucchini and halloumi skewers with mint dressing - Lisa Featherby/Gourmet Traveller

The last category is when you add fruit to the mix - the most common fruits being pineapple, mango, peach and apricot, but I did see strawberries too. Mostly it's paired with cheese, but occasionally vegetables, as here in this recipe from Gourmet Traveller's Clare Maguire for Sweet and sour eggplant skewers with coconut and kale sambal.

It certainly does seem to make sense to use just one vegetable, and definitely to keep to one texture, but Ottolenghi, in his letter of advice, does seem to admit to occasionally mixing by saying:

"I pre-cook the stragglers: a quick par-blanch or par-roast for anything dense, like potatoes or squash, before it goes anywhere near a skewer. And for courgettes and mushrooms, which are particularly thirsty, I marinate hard - even just with lots of chilli, garlic, lemon and oil, it adds a lot of the flavour that direct char alone won’t manage."

In this case - his Baharat brown butter veggie skewers from that newsletter - shown here is a mix of tinned palm hearts and tinned artichoke hearts - both precooked, paired with zucchini. Alas the recipe is not online - it was the second example in his newsletter and behind a paywall - I just have the free version. Maybe it will appear in a book sometime. He has a new one coming out in September - just in time for summer barbecues.

YEARS GONE BY

July 22

2025 - A perfect match - zucchini and pasta

2024 - Peanuts

2023 - Biryani extremes

2022 - Precious - in what sense?

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing

2019 - Nothing

2018 - An omelette and a glass of wine - cleaning out the fridge

2017 - Acai berries

2016 - Ancient Roman food