Chicken Souvlaki
May 2nd, 2007
CookingAmes and I have been so busy that we haven’t posted anything here in a while. Everything’s OK though, just busy. Fortunately, she’s just finishing her semester, so we should start having fun stuff to post about again now that the summer is here. To kick that off, I thought I’d let you know what we had for dinner last weekend. Riveting, I know, but it was our first attempt at Greek food and was really tasty.
Why Greek food? Well, there’s this little place in West Columbia called “Nick’s House of Pizza” that we like to go to. They have really good pizza and calzones, but they also have a lot of traditional Greek fare. Every time we go there, one of us always orders the Souvlaki Chicken Dinner. It’s an awesome dish, with spicy chicken, Greek potatoes, pita bread, and Tzatziki sauce. The problem is that the restaurant is about 20 minutes away. Rather than driving all the way out to West Columbia when we have a hankerin’ for some Souvliaki, we figured we’d learn to make it at home.
To make things easier, we found highly-reviewed recipes for each part of our dinner on AllRecipes.com:
The greek potatoes were awesome and super easy with the directions given. The only downside to this dish is that it takes about 2 hours to bake. If/when we do these again, I think we’ll use red or new potatoes rather than the regular baking potatoes I accidentally picked up at the store.
For the Souvlaki, we obviously went with chicken rather than the pork which was recommended in the recipe, I’m sure the pork would have been good, but we were trying to make something similar to Nick’s, so chicken it was. As you might be able to tell from the picture above, we cut the chicken into strips and threaded them onto shish-kabobs, mixing in onion and red pepper chunks. MMMmmmm.
The Tzatziki sauce was good, but wasn’t quite Nick’s. Amy noted that she thought Tzatziki normally has cucumber in it, and sure enough, another recipe we found did include pureed cucumber…and mint, which we both agreed would be good additions for next time.
All in all it was a very successful dinner, and these are definitely recipes that will go into our regular rotation. 
May 3rd, 2007 at 9:32 am
MMmmMmmm… the pictures are making me hungry for it again! Jason didn’t mention it, but the chicken is served with warm pita…. its awesome, really easy to make and fairly healthy! Enjoy.
May 21st, 2007 at 5:16 am
Looks piquant
bon appétit!
May 27th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
We tried this recipe and it was very good. I pureed about 1/2 a cucumber in the blender a few sprigs of mint and the remaining ingredients. It was very good but I didn’t take into account how much water cucumbers have. I think it would be best if next time we pour it through a sieve or cheese cloth. Other then that one thing it was great. The wine suggestion was also good. Thanks for the recipe. It is a “make again”.
May 29th, 2007 at 9:15 am
We just made this again for my parents with the cucumber. I pureed them and then tried to squeeze out as much of the water as i could through a small strainer. I think a cheese cloth would work better if you had time to let it sit and strain. ALSO, we found Greek yogurt in the Greenwise dairy section of publix. It was about 1.79$ per 7oz container, but it was MUCH thicker than regular yogurt and had the perfect flavor and texture. If you can find it, its totally worth it! After making the potatoes again, I also suggest waiting to add the lemon juice until the end of the baking time. The potatoes seem to absorb ALOT of this flavor, so adding it at the end might balance it out better. We will also be making it again!!
June 29th, 2007 at 8:31 am
hey guys!!!!
probably no babies for at least another year. we miss you guys!
how are you? amy when do you graduate or are you already done? i am done august 11th and we have no clue where or what next. mike is working at a new job as recreational director for an apt complex and seems to really be enjoying that. we are thinking about moving but are not against staying. are you guys staying long term in your beautiful home? what else is new? any job updates or baby updates? none here
caroline
July 21st, 2007 at 3:51 pm
Well the original recipe for tzatziki is yogurt, cucumber, garlic, and dill, trust i am from Greece i know!.
If you liked this maybe you should come to Greece and try other traditional recipes as well…
I found this website from jasongraphix.com, which i found when i bought jason’s “Principles of Beautifull…”.
Excellent book!!!!
Geia xara!!!
August 7th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Maybe one day Daddy and I will get to taste one of your great meals. Love Pat