The Copycat Chef: Rosemary Beef Kebabs With Greenmarket Vegetables

The death of The Silver Palate‘s Shelly Lukins marks the end of an era: she and her partner Julee Rosso taught so many of us how to cook. They developed simple but sophisticated recipes for entertaining and introduced American cooks to bright Mediterranean flavors. Before the Silver Palate, garlic was considered exotic, and you couldn’t find fresh herbs at fancy supermarkets; now both are readily available nearly everywhere.

It was with their recipe for rosemary beef skewers in mind that I started working on this recipe several weeks ago. The marinade has been toned down – no more Asian influences of soy sauce and sesame oil – and the focus is on the herbs and greenmarket vegetables. If it hadn’t been for The Silver Palate, who knows if food would have evolved the way it has.

Recipe: Rosemary Beef Kebabs with Greenmarket Vegetables

For the marinade:
2 tbsp. minced fresh rosemary
2 tbsp. minced assorted fresh herbs – thyme, sage, oregano, parsley – whatever you have on hand
2 large garlic cloves, minced
¾ c. extra-virgin olive oil
2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
zest of ½ lemon
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
1 tsp. red pepper flakes

For the skewers:
2 lbs. boneless sirloin steak, cut into 1 ½-in. cubes
12 oz. greenmarket button mushrooms, scrubbed and halved
sea salt
freshly ground pepper
2 pints greenmarket heirloom cherry tomatoes
20 oz. greenmarket mini bell peppers, cored, seeded, and cut into 2-in. dice*
½ lemon in cheesecloth

Whisk the marinade ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the beef and mushrooms and stir to coat. Cover loosely and let the mixture sit at room temperature for 4 hours or overnight in the fridge.

Soak bamboo skewers in water for at least ½ hour before making kebabs.

When you’re ready to thread the skewers, take the beef cubes out of the marinade, lay them flat on a cutting board, and salt and pepper them vigorously. Turn them over and repeat.

Thread a tomato, mushroom half, beef cube, and cut pepper onto a skewer and repeat until you reach the top. Make all the skewers; you can set them aside in the fridge at this point.

When ready to cook, preheat the grill on high, closed, for several minutes. Cook the beef skewers in batches at high heat for 2-3 minutes per side. Spray exposed wooden ends of skewers with water to keep them from burning.

Arrange the beef skewers on a platter and squeeze the remaining ½ lemon over all. Salt and pepper them one last time. Serve garnished with rosemary and (optional) pesto mixed with a little olive oil.

Serves 4-6.

*Lesson learned the hard way: Be very careful to buy sweet bell peppers at the greenmarket, not super-hot Scotch bonnets. If unmarked, they look very similar!

** These can also be made as an hors d’oeuvre, as pictured at top: just use one round of meat-mushroom-tomato-pepper per skewer.

Union Square Greenmarket sources:

Rosemary and other fresh herbs: Stokes’ Farm
Garlic: Keith’s Farm’s rocambole garlic
Mini bell peppers and cherry tomatoes: Berried Treasures