> Cherry tomatoes and beef cubes have much different cooking issues -- the tomatoes will get all soft and fall off if you cook 'em too long.

I'm not sure how you're defining "too long", but - not in my experience. I didn't just come up with that example randomly: I stopped working on the problem to go to a party, where I explained what I was doing to a friend - and pointed out that she was using a similar algorithm at that very moment, since she was making up those skewers. They came out just fine, by the way - nothing fell off.

As to the side salad - that's how I prefer my tomatoes as well, although I'm likely to throw in some Romanian feta ("telemea"), add a little cumin, and chop up some fresh dill. And I certainly wouldn't use cherry tomatoes, either. :)