Cookin' with sticks

It was a lousy rainy day in New England and our older daughter was at a play date with her best friend. We spent a quiet afternoon with our younger daughter and I enlisted her to help with dinner.

I planned on making swordfish and grilled vegetable skewers. This was something I knew she would enjoy helping with. I had her soak the bamboo skewers in some water while I cut 1 zucchini, rinsed a bunch of whole button mushrooms, and sliced 1 purple onion.

I had her add about 1/4 C. of olive oil to a bowl, along with a few pinches of kosher salt, a big squeeze of Dijon mustard, the juice from a lemon and a heaping tablespoon of a red pepper jelly (which in hindsight I would have left out, as it made the food a little spicy for Abby, but we LOVED it.)

I cut a 1/2 pound swordfish steak into cubes and Abby dumped all of the veggies and fish into the bowl. She stirred everything around while we talked about how delicious swordfish was and how it tasted exactly like chicken, in fact, it's name should be called Chicken Fish...

Abby and I skewered the ingredients while Kirk heated up the grill to high. I've found that getting the grill nice and hot, then turning it down creates a good carmelization to the food.

Once everything was skewered, I put them on the grill and let them cook for about 3 minutes, then turned the skewers and let them cook another 5 minutes. I took them off the grill and squeezed the last of the lemon juice on them, and covered the plate with foil until we were ready to eat.

I had also baked some potatoes to go with our food on a stick.

Abby loved the mushrooms and fish, not the onions or zucchini. It was great to see her try the fish and she loved making things on skewers.

Tomorrow we are having our 91 year old tennis playing neighbor over for dinner. I'm going to grill some shrimp and scallops, saute some snap peas and see what else we can cook on a stick!