Russian Shashlik Kebabs

You may already have noticed that my birthday party had a Russian theme this year... I made a vodka and lime cake shaped like a Russian doll, some chocolate vegan cupcakes decorated with Russian doll wafers, and some sugar cookies (which also happened to be vegan) which I decorated to look like Russian dolls.

I also wanted to make some savoury food as we were going out in the evening to the local greyhound stadium (I thought we'd do something a bit different!). It needed to be something that wouldn't take too long to prepare, since I had to do all the baking as well, and also be easy to make vegetarian and meat options - oh, and ideally be finger-food as I barely had enough room for everyone to sit down! I also wanted to tie the food into the Russian theme of the party so had a look online and found all sorts of  'interesting' Russian foods I could cook... then was very pleased to discover this recipe for Shashlik kebabs, which are apparently Russian.

It's a simple recipe that essentially involves marinading chunks of lamb in a mixture of onion, garlic, shallots, parsley, cayenne pepper and pomegranate juice. I'm not entirely sure to what extent this is Russian, or why, but it sounded nice and fit my requirements, so I decided to make it, and thread the lamb chunks onto skewers with mini potatoes and vegetables as well.

I decided to make some garlic mushrooms by marinading mini button mushrooms in a mixture of garlic puree and melted butter, though I used dairy-free margarine so these were suitable for vegans.

I then followed the recipe and mixed onion, garlic, parsley and pomegranate juice

Marinading cubes of lamb in the mixture

I threaded the lamb onto kebabs along with mini onions, red, green and orange peppers, the garlic mushrooms and mini baby new potatoes which I had pre-roasted. Rather than grill the kebabs I oven-cooked them as it meant I didn't have to worry so much about keeping an eye on them. They were pretty tasty and it was good to be able to combine different items for meat eaters, vegans, and people who are just generally a bit fussy!