Chicken Souvlaki with Tzatziki-- Kalamaki Style

I'm a huge fan of meat on a stick. From Japanese Yakitori to corn dogs at the Virginia State Fair, if you can thread it on a skewer, I'm gonna eat it.

One of my all-time favorite meat treats is Greek souvlaki. Souvlaki is a popular handheld street food found in the many souvlaki shops that dot the landscape of Greece, which are apparently so popular and prolific, they have been rumored to put a McDonald's or two out of business.

Traditional souvlaki, which is a generic term to used to describe skewered or rotisserie meat (think gyro), can be enjoyed wrapped in warm pita bread with onions, tomatoes and a generous dousing of piquant tzatziki (a yogurt sauce accented with fresh garlic, cucumber, lemon and olive oil) or on its own, grilled and skewered (referred to as kalamaki) which is served simply with a piece of bread on the side.

Meats that are commonly used include: lamb, pork, gyro meat, swordfish, beefteki (a ground beef and lamb mixture) or chicken.

Quality Greek or Lebanese olive oil is essential to this dish

However, the best part about souvlaki, other than eating it with tzatziki and olive oil dripping down your arms (it ain't first date food) is that it's super easy to make, merely requiring a few quality ingredients, a handful of skewers and a hot grill.

A cast iron indoor grill works fine, too

The most important takeaway here has to be ingredients. When I make this dish at home, and I often do since grilled souvlaki is just perfect for an evening of outdoor grilling, I use either Lebanese or Greek extra virgin olive oil exclusively (i.e. first pressing only). Generous amounts of olive oil are integral to this dish and many other Mediterranean recipes, so it's worth the investment to buy the good stuff. Same goes for oregano. I use Greek oregano (either dried or fresh) which can be bought in large amounts at any Greek/Mediterranean specialty grocer. As you may or may not know, not all oregano's are the same. In fact, they differ widely, from Mexican oregano to Italian oregano, with Greek oregano most known for its rather pungent almost tongue numbing flavor.

As far as  lemon juice, that goes without saying. Don't even think of using anything other than fresh squeezed lemons for this dish or I will hunt you down and smack you.

Spanakopita, pita and tzatziki will complete this meal

Also, be sure to grill your skewers at medium-high or hotter since much of the appeal of this dish is the nice caramelization of your meat(s). If you find your skewers are starting to burn, simply wrap the ends in tin foil, which should do the trick. 

When serving, if you have the opportunity to whip some some spanakopita or tiropita (Greek cheese pie) this will make your meal all the better. Also, tzatziki (see recipe below) and fresh-from-the-oven pita bread is essential. Quartered tomatoes and onions tossed with a little olive oil and red wine vinegar will round out your at-home Greek fest.

Chicken Souvlaki Kalamaki-Style
Serves 4

This recipe is about as simple as it gets with only a few basic ingredients. As mentioned, it’s very important to use a quality olive oil and real Greek oregano, which is far more flavorful than any of the supermarket stuff.

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil (preferably Greek or Lebanese)
¼ cup fresh lemon juice
One heaping teaspoon dried Greek oregano
1 pound boneless chicken breasts, cubed
Pinch of salt
A couple of grinds of black pepper
Wooden skewers, soaked in water for at least 30 minutes

Mix together olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, salt and pepper in a bowl.  Add chicken and toss well.  Cover and marinate in the refrigerator at least an hour (preferably overnight).  You can also marinate your chicken in a plastic bag if that's easier.

Remove chicken from marinade and thread on skewers.  Lightly oil your grates and preheat a grill to medium-high. Grill skewers until they are lightly charred and cooked all the way through.  Serve with tzatziki and warm pita bread.

Easy Tzatziki
Makes 2 cups

This is excellent served alongside beef, lamb or chicken kabobs or atop a simple piece of grilled fish.  For an easy starter, serve with sliced veggies and quartered pita bread for dipping.

1 medium-sized cucumber, peeled, seeded and finely minced or grated (English cucumber works well)*
2 cups Greek yogurt (preferably Fage brand)
1/4 cup mint, minced
1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon cumin
Salt and pepper, to taste
Good quality olive oil, for drizzling

Mix all ingredients well in a medium-sized bowl. Cover and chill until ready to serve.  Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with additional herbs before serving.  Best made a day ahead.

*To avoid a watery tzatziki, sprinkle cucumber pieces generously with salt and let sit for 20 minutes. Then squeeze out as much water as possible. If you choose this method, leave off any additional salt.

All photos and text ©2011 Fatback and Foie Gras. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission Pin It Now!

Because You Need More Meat: Breakfast, UK-Style

Start the day off right--a traditional Welsh breakfast

One of my many food resolutions for 2011 is to eat more big, fatty breakfasts. I've gotten quite lazy in this regard, and have found myself nibbling a couple of crackers, a bowl of fruit, maybe a couple of scoops of yogurt, or most of the time, simply endless cups of black coffee. And, what have I gotten out of this? By the time lunch rolls around, I'm famished and half out of it, with most of my spaciness attributed to one hell of a sugar crash. The answer here is clear. I need to eat more greasy meat.

Low fat granola bars are no way to live, especially when something like this can instead be enjoyed with vim and vigor:

Over the years, I've traveled somewhat extensively throughout England, Scotland and Wales, and what I've discovered (in addition to some seriously good beer) is that the Brits know how enjoy a hearty breakfast. Being from West Virginia, where my granny was known to known to cook meals where literally everything had some sort of meat or meat byproduct in it, be it country ham gravy, fatback infused collards or brown beans simmered in nothing but a ham hock and a little salt and pepper, I have always counted myself as some sort of meaty expert when it comes to all meals, especially breakfast. Growing up in our house, the eggs were fried in bacon grease, the white gravy made from country sausage drippings, and the biscuits rolled in pure lard, so when I sampled my first real British-style breakfast, I seriously thought I had been transported back to granny's kitchen.

A traditional English breakfast must include Heinz beans

Eggs fried in bacon grease? Check. Greasy sausage links? Check. Bacon (streaky bacon) or Rashers (which are made from pork loin versus all belly)? Check. Side of canned baked beans in a tomato sauce that contains way too much sugar? Yup. All that was missing was a buttery biscuit and a bowl of mom's homemade apple butter, and I can forgive the Brits for including a vegetable or two (hence, the tomato and the mushroom) since those were also cooked in bacon drippings making them perfectly acceptable.

And, there are plenty of variations to the "Full Breakfast" theme, making an English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh breakfast a veritable blank canvas of potential porky goodness. There's black pudding (a.k.a. blood sausage) which is a combination of pig's blood, suet, breadcrumbs and oatmeal that is pan fried and served alongside your eggs, sausage, rashers and beans. (See photo a top.) Apparently, Barbara Streisand is a pretty big fan of it, too, which makes it even more cool (or she ruined it).

In Wales, it's all about the laverbread (a.k.a. Bara Lafwr). Laverbread is a nutrient-rich breakfast treat made from Laver, a type of seaweed found off the coast of Britain. Traditionally, it's pureed an served alongside rashers, sausages and cockles, making it the most healthy breakfast additions of the bunch. While visiting Wales, I found it to be particularly tasty when spread on a piece of crusty, buttered toast.

Photo courtesy Welsh Foodie

Other additions to a full U.K.-styled breakfast range from bubble and squeak (made from a mixture of leftover roasted vegetables often including cabbage, potatoes and carrots), sauteed mushrooms, oatcakes, farl (Irish fried soda bread) or the pinnacle of all that's good when it comes to pieces-parts, Scottish Haggis.  Last, but not least, all of this grease-laden goodness must be washed down with pot of hot black tea or perhaps a pint of Guinness if you're doing it Irish-style and/or straddle the alcoholic line.

Making a hearty meat-laden breakfast in honor of the British Isles couldn't be easier. Start with your meats (bacon, sausage, rashers, black pudding etc...) and fry them well in a hot pan (cast-iron is best for flavor).  Drain on paper towels and reserve most or all of the grease, depending on your intended fat quotient. Next up, fry any vegetables like a sliced-in-half tomato, mushrooms (Portabello is deliciously woody) or cubed potatoes. Set those aside. Keep your pan hot and crack in your eggs. Fry them how you like.  I like over-easy best for its runny-ness factor. Toast your bread. Warm your beans and season the whole shebang with plenty of freshly ground black pepper and a little salt.

We added a little Toad in Hole action to our breakfast

Some recipes are not meant to be an exact science and are better off with a little of this added to a little of that. Hence, why I don't have an actual written recipe for you. However, for you anal types (and you know who you are) here's a link to Jamie Oliver's Full Monty Breakfast Recipe which I think is pretty close to an authentic English-style start to the day. Chef Oliver recommends serving his breakfast with my favorite condiment on the planet, HP Sauce, so that automatically makes it a good rec in my book.

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A Little Chat with Chef Ming Tsai

Ming in action at the Barbados, Food, Wine & Rum Fest

Had the opportunity to chat with one of my culinary heroes, Chef Ming Tsai, at the Barbados Food, Wine & Rum Fest  Did a little feature for the Richmond Times Dispatch featuring the Chef's thoughts on the importance of dining together as a family, musings on his cookbook, "Simply Ming One-Pot Meals" as well as some of his favorite signature East Meets West-styled recipes.

Check it here: Celebrity Chef Talks Food

Me and the man himself.

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Stuff You Gotta Eat in Barbados: An Amateur's Photo Journey

Flying fish sandwich from Hilton Barbados

Yeah, you know you wish you were in Barbados. Heck, who doesn't? It's stinking February, and if you're like me, you've got some serious cabin fever going on right now. Virginia has been nothing but cold, snow, icy rain or generally depressing overcast days that make one want to hit a local watering hole and waste an entire afternoon downing cheap beer with the locals while inhaling gobs of secondhand smoke. Not that I've done that or anything....

A couple of months back, I was fortunate enough to acquire a hall pass from all this crappy weather and make my first visit ever to the land best known as the birthplace of rum for none other than the annual Food, Wine & Rum Fest which featured all kinds of culinary genius, from foodie television gods Tom Colicchio and Ming Tsai to culinary innovators like Texan/cowboy cutie, Tim Love and "nose to tail" man-of-the-moment Fergus Henderson.

In addition to the events that surrounded the festival itself, which included intimate cooking classes with all of the chefs in attendance as well as a grand tasting where both local and guest chefs served up mini-tastes of their best of the best, Bajan food in general is nothing to snicker at. Generally, Barbadian food is hearty comfort fare dominated by fried goodies like flying fish sandwiches topped with plantains, platters of fried chicken or snapper served up with a big wedge of macaroni pie or alongside okra and cornmeal-laden Cou Cou with nearly all of it drizzled in Bajan hot sauce (a vinegar and habanero blend that'll set you right). 

Stuffed pork, macaroni pie & fried snapper

 And, don't forget the street food: saltfish cakes, Indian-inspired roti's, cutters (fried fish sandwiches topped with egg or cheese), souse (boiled pig's head and feet) and grilled pig's tails. You can sample most if not all of these goodies in one fell swoop if you're lucky enough to hit Oistin's Fish Fry on the weekends, which is a must.

Curried pork & potato roti. Hearty and dirt cheap.

Then, there's the fine dining options, which like rum shacks, can be found all over the island. Local fare goes upscale at most of these establishments yet also comes with a hefty price tag, but when you're enjoying delights such as warm lobster salad in a truffled vinaigrette or Parmesan encrusted Barracuda while overlooking a moonlight ocean, I say, save your pennies and splurge a little.

Here are a few drool-worthy highlights from the Food, Wine & Rum Fest and the lovely island of Barbados:

Chef Tim Love (left) whips up his local Black Belly Lamb Sandwiches from the Food, Wine & Rum fest at the Lion Castle Polo Estate's grand gala.

Canadian Chef Rob Feenie knocked it out of the park with his Butternut Squash and Mascarpone Ravioli topped with a Black Truffle Beurre Blanc sauce as his sous chef begins plating (below).

Not a bad view for a beach side picnic of cutters, roti's and rum punch.

Bajan brunch: fried chicken, peas and rice, plantain stuffing and a good squeeze from the hot sauce bottle.

No meal is complete without a platter of fish cakes. These were from Tapas Restaurant and were uniquely Thai inspired with just a touch of lemongrass.

For more about visiting Barbados, check out Visit Barbados

To get in on next year's, Food, Wine & Rum Fest check out the dates for 2011

All photos and text ©2011 Fatback and Foie Gras. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission Pin It Now!

Winter on the Amalfi Coast and Real-Deal Neapolitan Pizza

View of Arienzo, Amalfi Coast, Italy.

So, I've been gone, but there's been a pretty good reason. Along with nursing my elderly dog, Charlie, who has not been doing well these days, and somehow getting a herniated disc in my neck (getting old sucks), I had the opportunity to fulfill one of my bucket list travel dreams-- Italy. Nearly seven years ago, my husband and I agreed that, come hell or high water, we would somehow get ourselves over to Rome and the Amalfi Coast and essentially eat and drink as much as our wallets and stomachs would allow. So, when I happened across one of those not-to-be-missed ticket sales on US Airways that surprisingly included a decently-priced upgrade to business class (which, if you can afford the extra cost, is an excellent way to rack up some serious frequent flyer points quickly-- 21,000 to be exact, which is enough for a RT domestic ticket) I jumped all over it.

Planning a trip to Italy can be quite overwhelming, especially if your sole purpose is to partake of some of the best food and wine this country has to offer, yet you've only got a mere seven days to do this. So, after careful consideration and quite a bit of back and forth, we decided to hit Rome for a few days, then the medieval village of Mazzano Romano to learn how to make Roman-style pasta with Chef Fabio Bongianni at his home, where we also stayed the night and rang in the New Year (a totally separate post in and of itself---amazing experience). From there, we decided to drive to Positano (not for the faint of heart) and the Amalfi Coast for several more days and then, bang, it was back on the plane to the states.  Not long enough, for sure, not even close, but real life seems to find you no matter how far away from home you are and you just got to get back.

So to begin, here's little glimpse of what you'll find when traveling to the Amalfi Coast.

Sunset dinner at Li Galli in Positano

Positano is so picturesque is almost seems unreal. Around 1pm, al fresco dining literally takes over (and we were darn lucky to get 60 degrees in January) where diners sip glasses of wine made from local Anglianico grapes from the Campania region and nibble multi-course meals dominated by specialties from the sea: spaghetti with wild clams, fritto misto's laden with local squid, zuppa de pesce and anything and everything made from the famed Amalfi lemons, which can plucked from the trees during winter to accent semifreddo's, baba's and fluffy sponge cakes.

No meal is complete without a chilled glass of locally made Limoncello alongside a cup of espresso. An average lunch can last several hours, a heady nod to the origins to the slow food line of thought. After three days of this style of dining, one can't help but ponder, "I could seriously get used to this."

Then, there's the pizza....

Let me start off by saying that this is not a post about what constitutes authentic Neapolitan-style pizza or otherwise, since I have come to discover, for some-such odd reason, pizza has become an incredibly touchy subject for foodies across the board. I didn't come to Amalfi, which is less than hour from Naples by the way, to research authentic versus non authentic pies or what the VPN Association considers "real Neapolitan pizza" or the like. I came here to chill out with my husband, eat great food, drink plenty of local wine and generally be on vacation, which considering I write about food and travel for a living, is a rare opportunity these days.

I wanted to shut my food brain off for one week and simply taste real Italian pizza for the first time, and believe me, we ate ALOT of it, mainly because it was cheap, with a 14-inch sized pie costing about 10-12 Euros. Two pies alongside a bottle of wine for 10 Euros and you're sitting pretty for pricey Italy. 

When it came to my first bite of Naples-style pizza, we hit the well-known Bucca di Bacco in Positano. Since it was the off-season, the main restaurant and accompanying hotel were closed (like most places in Positano during this time of year, so take note) but the outdoor restaurant which sits right on the beach was open.

We ordered our wine, pet the chubby dog, who clearly has had his share of pizza nibbles, and finally decided on two classic pies: an olive oil based white pizza topped with fresh porcini mushrooms and a tomato sauce based pizza topped with mozzarella and arugula.

Both arrived fresh out of the wood-fired oven, and unlike American-style pies were uncut, something we saw repeatedly during our pizza-eating extravaganza. In most places in Italy, pizzas arrive wholly intact with diners receiving a knife and fork to eat their pie one bite at a time. We never saw a local pick up a slice and eat it by hand when dining in a sit down restaurant. Not once.

As far as the Neapolitan pies go in and of themselves, as you can imagine, they were amazingly good and surprisingly simple. Upon first bite, the thin crust had a lovely salty crunch which soon morphed into a chewy almost earthy, yeasty flavor that paired effortlessly with the umami-laden porcini's. As far as the standard slightly soggy center that Neapolitan pizza's are said to exhibit, this one, while having a firm crust at the edges, was indeed slightly soggy in the center. Perhaps there's a better word here than soggy (such as pillowy?) since by no means was the pizza wet or loose in the middle. It simply wasn't uber-crispy.

The pizza rucola was slightly softened in the middle as well, even a bit more than its white counterpart due to the generous amount of San Marzano tomato sauce on its crust. We had this style of pizza several times while in Italy, topped with everything from hand-pulled buffalo mozzarella to nothing but a little Parmesan and fresh basil. Like the porcini pizza, the crust was crispy, a bit salty and had just the right amount of black char to give it depth, yet the chopped arugula added another layer of peppery flavor. So divine.

The key to all this goodness is simplicity. All of the pizzas we sampled were very lightly dressed and flavored. No crazy-on-the-garlic flavor (sorry Mamma Zu). No gooey cheese-laden pies piled high with ground beef, sausage, bacon etc...and no fancy schmancy toppings like smoked gouda, chicken or pineapple (blech) and no greasy, bready crust (a la Bottom's Up). Just wood-fired crusty goodness delicately accented with a locally grown tomatoes, handmade mozzarella (or ricotta) and olive oil made from olive trees only miles away.

Keep an eye out for more Italy posts.  Next up, the medieval village of Mazzano for New Years and two days in Rome.

All photos and text ©2010 Fatback and Foie Gras. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission

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