Last Night's Dinner: Salmon + Lemon Kebabs

Last night was one of those rare evenings that neither Jason nor I had to work so we were able to partake in one of our favorite activities - cooking dinner and actually enjoying a meal together at home.

Chicken and salmon are two of my favorite lean meats to fix as a main course, so I did a little online research and collected some new recipes to try out.  I was especially anxious to try these Grilled Salmon + Lemon Kebabs from SkinnyTaste, and they turned out marvelously paired with Bacon-Wrapped Green Beans, dairy-free corn pudding and a California Red Blend wine.

I was surprised by how easy it was make all three of these dishes simultaneously.  After pre-heating the oven to 375 degrees, I assembled the green bean bundles and wrapped them in a half-piece of bacon.  I placed them on a foil-lined baking sheet sprayed with 100% pure canola oil cooking spray.  I sprayed each of the bundles with cooking spray before sprinkling them with cracked sea salt, black pepper and a little garlic salt.  

Next, I mixed up a box of Jiffy corn muffin mix, a can of whole kernel corn and a can of creamed corn with two eggs and poured the mixture into a small pyrex baking dish with melted Parkay in the bottom.  Since the corn pudding takes 30 minutes to bake, I put that in the oven first, and then began cutting the salmon into small chunks for the kebabs.

Each skewer (soaked in water an hour prior to cooking time) fit four pieces of salmon and three folded lemon slices.  Once the kebabs were complete, I sprinkled each of them with a spice mixture of dried oregano, garlic salt, sea salt, pepper, cumin, cayenne and sesame seeds.

By this time, the oven timer was down to about 15 minutes remaining, so I went ahead and added the green bean bundles to the oven, and then started prepping my George Foreman GRV120GM Electric Contact Grill.  My grandparents bought me the grill a couple of years ago for Christmas, and we have gotten some serious use out of this sucker.  I constantly refer to the little manual it came with to see how long I need to grill different foods according to how well done I want them to be.  It's really quite convenient for those who love to grill, but don't want to combust outside during those sweltering Texas summers.  The grill takes all of five minutes to completely heat up, so I quickly threw on the kebabs, and they were done in four minutes.  

I did run into a slight issue when my kebabs were done, but sadly, the corn pudding was still pretty runny in the middle and the bacon around the green beans was still raw.  I rapidly fixed my mistake by turning the oven up to 400 degrees and letting each dish cook for about 10 more minutes.  That seemed to do the trick because everything tasted perfect and made for the perfect weeknight dinner.

*For full recipes, click the links I have provided in my post!