Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Chicken shawarma
Today, for a lark, I googled “Tongan recipes” and discovered pani keke, which are donuts, more or less. Can’t have donuts for dinner, so I googled “Lebanese recipes” and eventually found this recipe for chicken shawarma.
This was good. I followed the recipe almost to a tee, but did add about 1/2 teaspoon of cumin, 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric, and 1/4 teaspoon ground clove to the marinade. I chopped the chicken thigh meat into 3/4 inch cubes and marinated for about 4 hours. Instead of cooking on the range, I put the chicken with its marinade into a casserole dish, covered it with foil, and baked it for 45 min at 350 F. Then I fished out all the chicken, put it on foil, and broiled it until brown. Probably not a necessary step, although I suspect it added some flavor at the cost of dryness. But if you’re going to make a nice salad of plain yogurt, cucumber, and tomato, then it doesn’t matter how dry the meat is.
For posterity (just in case that link disappears some day — and also because I changed things a bit), here’s the marinade:
1 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup malt vinegar
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon of cumin
1/2 teaspoon of turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground clove
juice from 1 lemon
The tahini sauce in that recipe is ridiculous. If you start with one cup of tahini, trust me, you won’t use even one-quarter of the end result. Here’s a nice tahini sauce:
1/3 cup tahini
juice of one large lemon
One large clove of garlic, crushed
salt to taste
water
In a can of tahini, the oil will typically separate from the solids. Carefully stir the can (the oil tends to splash, if you’re a slob like me) until homogeneous. Mix 1/3 cup tahini with the lemon juice. As you stir, you’ll notice that the tahini thickens to a remarkable degree. Add garlic, thin out the sauce with water, and then taste for salt.
For the yogurt, cucumber, and tomato salad, simply be careful to use plain yogurt and not vanilla yogurt. Yes, I did this once. We usually have plain AND vanilla in our fridge, so it’s an easy mistake. Cut the cucumber and tomatoes into small cubes and add enough yogurt, however much you like.
Then it’s just a matter of salting the chicken shawarma and putting it all together into pita pockets, along with some red chili sauce. We always have a jar of the red chili garlic sauce you can get at Chinese markets. Harissa would be nice, but oddly enough, the Chinese red chili garlic sauce makes an awfully good harissa.
Enjoy!
D.
Vanilla yogurt and salad – yum! My obsessively thrifty grandfather once used vanilla yogurt to make blue cheese salad dressing, then insisted on eating all of it because he wasn’t going to waste perfectly good blue cheese.
Who says you can’t have donuts for dinner? If you can have waffles or pancakes for dinner, you can have donuts. 😉
SHWARMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. mmmmm i love me some chicken or turkey shwarma…i like to eat it like they do in israel, in pita with the chips (french fries) inside the pita too. the chips balance out the spicy, since i dont put anything else in or on. damn, now i want good israeli pita. america needs to get on that. israeli pita is beyond compare, especially hot out of the oven, bought for two shekels ($.50) at the shuk (outdoor market). *sigh*
that being said, i dunno if i could actually ever make it–the shwarma, that is. i think i like eating it without being aware of what’s actually in it 🙂
I suppose you could make it with tofu, Shaina. But only make enough for yourself 😉
Homemade pita isn’t difficult. I’ve done it a couple of times. I wonder how it compares to the Israeli stuff?