Tuesday Tasties: Chicken Souvlaki with Tzatziki

Yes, it’s another Greek tasty, malaka. But Greek food is tasty and also happens to be my very favorite. If you want to write about the gross food that you dig, like pineapple pizza, get your own damn blog. I’m just throwing Hawaiian pizza out there because I think it’s the single most vulgar thing going that isn’t seafood.

Janet graciously reminded me it was Tuesday, suggested and IM’d me an idea (from the next room) and even offered to marinate the chicken. When my mother eventually yelled up the stairs “David, it’s almost 6pm and we’re starving” I stopped my all-important Scrabulous game and headed down to the kitchen. Sure enough, there was a bowl of poulet soaking in the fridge and I got right to work working my culinary magic.

The recipe Janet followed for the marinade is here, but I just shot from the hip. Not knowing Janet had brought some little skewers with her from Boston, I asked my mother if we had any and she told me to look behind a cabinet in the laundry room. There I found a pair so big they may have bee souvenirs from her days chumming on a Japanese whaling vessel. They may also have been designed for use on a BBQ. I fired up my beloved TFal and decided to put two orders on each skewer and get on with my life. I chopped up hunks of onion and green/yellow peppers and assembled the slimy shafts of souvlaki.

I found 4 good sized pieces of President’s Choice naan bread in the freezer and popped them into the oven on a cookie sheet at low heat. Then, while the kebabs sizzled I whipped together a reasonable Greek salad using kalamaata olives, peppers, lettuce, radicchio, broccoli and feta. I made sure to carefully flipping the meat regularly – as that was something I failed to do adequately last time. I got all the meat to a nice brown color, evenly cooked throughout. I then heated a pan and quickly grilled the naan bread a little before plating as I wanted it to be slightly crunchy and the oven alone hadn’t sufficed.

For presentation I filled half the plates with salad and laid the naan almost flat on the other half. I slowly slid the souvlaki off the skewers so that it would remain “shiskibobby” looking and not fall off every which way. Then I ran a tzatziki streak (which is not actually a Greek super hero,) parallel to the meat and veg. Finally, the magic was topped off with a dollop of tzatziki in the center of the kebabs with a kalamaata olive on top.

The Highlights

• The fam-damily loved it. My Dad ate more of his dinner than I’ve seen him nosh in a long time.
• The naan from Loblaws and the tzatziki from Costco might as well have been sent over from Crete.
• I didn’t have to do the dishes

The Lowlights

• Halfway through cooking I had to slide a few rungs off of each skewer, as the end pieces of the chicken weren’t cooking properly.
• Could have definitely used some retsina as Operation: Garage aggravated my touchy back a little bit today.
• Limited variety of vegetables on hand to skewer.

I’d call tonight’s tasty another success. It’s good to be 2 for 2, but I’ve yet to try anything really out of my comfort zone. If anyone has any recipes they’d like to share, please do so in the comments – as long as they don’t include sharkhead pizza. Have a peek at a few more mouthwatering photos.