Monday, August 11, 2008
Souvlaki Report
This photo was taken after we'd eaten quite a bit. Rich looked at the rest of it and said it looked really good, and I should blog about it.
We tried this recipe for pork souvlaki this weekend. Actually, we used the marinade on both pork (country ribs cut up with my razor sharp knife) and chicken. Since Rich does the grilling in our family, he put the skewers together and then made vegetable skewers rather than just grilling the crookneck squash as I had intended. He cut up an onion, a jalapeno, one of our anaheims, a yellow squash and a tomato and put those on sticks, too.
This is basically the marinade my mom used on grilled chicken my entire life. The difference is that she used fresh parsley instead of oregano of any kind, and she put lemon juice in it. I followed his recipe, except that I increased the oregano and the garlic. I would keep that the same, but add my mom's parsley and lemon juice to make it perfect. Also, I just pureed the whole lot in the Cuisinart, and would do it that way again. It takes almost no time, and the only significant time in this recipe is the few hours marinating the meat.
I was pleasantly surprised at how well using the rather fatty, not as tender, country ribs worked for this. His recommendation of pork butt was not what I'd expect, but we went with a similar cut of meat (that we happened to already have in the freezer), thinking most people would use a more tender, lean cut. This was astoundingly good, though. In the future, I will definitely be using this marinade, with the additions I mentioned, on pork, chicken, lamb (though my green lamb is still a favorite around here) and even chuck cubes.
We cooked ours about five minute per side, rather than four minutes, and they were still tender, and had a nice crust on them. This is definitely worth making, and I would recommend playing around with this recipe. My mom used it on pieces of chicken, and you could mix it in with ground beef or lamb to make grilled kofta.
Labels: Homemaking, Recipes, Tales from the Kitchen
