Mama Mia! Greek is the new chic. In honor of Lily James’ new film “Mamma Mia Here We Go Again” we made chicken souvlaki with tzatziki sauce over Cesar salad. Our version has no carbs in sight because we didn’t have any pita bread, making this a totally gluten free version great for people on low to no carb diets. For those of you who don’t want to use chicken, this can also be done with potatoes. Scrummy Lane uses basically the same concept of oil, herb and heat in this similar recipe, “Best Greek Potatoes“. It even uses the same herb profile.
First off, I was worried about it going south for how frozen it was at first. After the microwave method half-worked, we chopped, marinated it for 2 hours and grilled them so that they could have an even cook time. You see, when frozen things like chicken go below the freezing temperature, the heat melts the ice before actually increasing the temperature, breaking down molecular bonds. When you rush to cook it without fully thawing the chicken first, it rises in temperature in such a short amount of time that by then, the outside is cooked deceivingly golden brown, but the inside is icy cold. It seems like a magic trick.
For spices, we put in a little salt, dill, black pepper, a squeeze of lemon, a few shakes of oregano and our favorite ingredient, you guessed it, raw garlic cloves! Hey, what can I say? Nothing turns around a bland pile of meat chunks quite like a generous handful of herbs and an acid kick in the head. Don’t forget the olive oil so that everything stays together and they have less chance of sticking to the grill. These little chunks cooked through very quickly, as soon as we laid them all down on the indoor flat cast-iron grill top, they were nearly ready to come back off.
Olives and Greece go back to roughly the 5th century when they were grown in the valleys among the grapes by small landowners and tenant farmers from Roman Italy. My own great-great-grandfather Giovanni Montera had a farm in Italy full of figs and olives. We’re using purple ones for our Ceasar spin-off salad. We used only spinach, feta and purple olives. Usually, they come in Maleficent’s signature green, purple and black colors. More importantly, the oil was used in the ancient Olympic games to coat the athletes bodies as protection from the elements and as a way to glorify the male physique, if sculptures weren’t enough.
I was in command of the TSAH-zee-key sauce. Yes, that’s the proper pronunciation. It’s just a mesh of cucumber chunks, dill, plain Greek yogurt and grated garlic. However, there are 2 versions, Ottoman and Greek only differentiating in the yogurt. The Ottoman version is called by the Turkish word “Cacik” and uses cow milk in the yogurt. The only true Greek “Tzatziki” is uses sheep milk yogurt. I never knew how mushy garlic could be when it’s grated on a planer. It brought such a big bite to the sauce. It was practically spicy in a horseradish sort of way, very different from traditionally spicy peppers. The creamy cooling effect of Greek yogurt was aided by cucumber slices patted dry before use. We chose to keep the skin on, but if you want to slice off the skins and put them in your water for flavor and a “Gillyweed” look, go right ahead.
Now, about the chicken…we were not stingy by any means. I was calling it “Chicken Mountain” in my best Cookie Monster voice. (Not as good as our photographer Nick’s impression though.) As much as they could stand on its own, we couldn’t stop dipping it into the sauce as a way to balance such thick juicy meat with garlic spice. We give this and the movie 5 shining stars.
The songs were catchy with easy-to-learn choreography for you sing and dance along fans. It made me think about how fun it is to be adventurous and try new things, even if you aren’t sure things will work out in the end, much like trying new food and cooking a new recipe. Try a different style sometime. Pick a random fruit or meat and see what you can do with it. All and all, Donna’s free-style carefree Greek escapade-turned business reminded me to take a bite out of life and not be so caught up in the work-work-work. Heck, I was voted “Dancing Queen” in Shenendehowa’s high school class of 2011. One of the most important things we understand about how cooking relates to life next to sanitation is to have fun!
