In the past few weeks, I have seriously been geek-ing out on the world wide web looking for new ideas in the kitchen. One commonality on almost every health blog I visited, was the far stretching love and uses for Greek yogurt. I mean, I have seen it used in desserts, dressings, as a snack. You name it, and it has been tried, loved, and blogged about.
Coincidentally, my sister-in-law LeRobins (who also happens to be my sister in law...get it?...she's a lawyer like me....one of my best friends from law school, actually!) was just raving this past weekend about how good and healthy Greek yogurt is. After all of the blog/online recommendations and a super reliable one from LeRobins, I had no choice but to try it out. So, I decided to Greek-out Persian style...and what better way is there to do that than with "Joojeh Kabob?" Joojeh Kabob refers to the Persian style marinading and grilling of chicken breasts. The Greek twist is that I marinated my chicken breast pieces in Greek Yogurt.
Here's how I went from geek to Persian-Greek:
1. I used chicken breast fillets because they are thick enough to dice up...
2. The chicken pack consisted of four fillets, but I only used two, as I was only cooking for Dr. Love and myself. Even with two, we ended up with leftovers for tomorrow's lunch.
3. I diced the two chicken fillets into one inch cubes. (Tip: Consistency in size will result in consistency in cooking time.)
4. I then marinated my chicken breast cubes with the following ingredients: one tablespoon of Greek yogurt (woot woot!), black pepper, chicken seasoning (the one I use is by Weber and called Kick'N Chicken...I love it), garlic sea salt seasoning (mine is McCormick brand), turmeric, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, salt (from my fatty puffer fish salt shaker), and dried parsley flakes (not pictured).
5. I mixed it all together...
6. I marinated the extra two breasts for tomorrow's dinner, but substituted out the Greek yogurt for extra virgin olive oil, mostly because I'm not sure how the yogurt and chicken combo will do overnight.
7. After marinating the chicken, I covered both the cubed chicken and tomorrow's leftovers, placed them in the fridge, and turned my attention to my wooden skewers. The only way to barbecue with these babies and not have them catch on fire is to soak them for a while before you're ready to barbecue (I've read that a minimum of 30 minutes will suffice, but in my experience, it's best to soak them for at least 45 minutes to an hour.)
8. I placed a heavy object (butter-knife in my case) on the skewers to keep them from floating up.
9. Once the skewers soaked for long enough, I pulled the chicken cubes out of the fridge and slid them onto the skewers.
10. I popped those babies on the bbq...
11. And less than ten minutes later, they were ready to go...in my belly!!!
12. I also made a salad with spring mix and spinach (not pictured).
I clipped my spring mix bag with one of my many Ikea clips...these things are amazing and come in various sizes (below). I'm pretty sure buying them was the best $2/$3 I have ever spent.
13. I added crumbled feta cheese...
14. I threw in some sliced peperoncini and Kalamata olives...
15. Diced up and threw in some red onion. (This onion saver is another super cheap, but great, find. Keeps my onions fresh for a super long time and also prevents them from stinking up the entire fridge.)
16. I also threw in some halved cherry tomatoes, seasoned the salad with salt and black pepper, and topped the whole thing with red wine vinaigrette dressing (I was out of balsamic vinaigrette).
And...drum roll please...........................
.............................the result was nothing short of Persian-Greek awesomeness! Dr. Love really enjoyed all of the flavors and especially loved that I finally made him something Persian-ish, while my favorite thing about the meal was that it was not only delicious, but also light and healthy. Try it and you will love it...noosheh jaan*!!!
*"bon appétit" in Farsi.
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