Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Shawarma 2.0!

Good morning and happy Sunday everyone.

Not gonna lie, this past week we had our asses handed to us at work. Some goddamn genius scheduled a 65 year celebration, new hire immersion, take your kids to work day and 3 (three) THREE fucking courses and one seminar all on campus and all within the span of one week.

Fuck. YOU. And fuck your scheduling. My team got fucking annihilated with work and I am fucking wiped out.

I usually like to do a nice theme that goes along with our recipe but I don’t know man. This fucking week.

Super easy inspiration for our recipe today. When I hear there’s a recipe out there with a 5 star rating and almost 25,000 reviews?

I’m giving that shit a whirl.

Just such a recipe does exist out there in the food world. It’s on the New York Times cooking website. Alas, the site is paywalled – You can usually get 1 view before being locked out. However!

There are knockoffs a-plenty if you know where to go and I used exactly one of those, courtesy of Something NewforDinner.com.

This recipe was released into the wild by Sam Sifton. According to the wikis “Sam Sifton is an American journalist and assistant managing editor at The New York Times. He previously served as the paper’s food editor. Sifton has also worked as deputy dining editor; dining editor; deputy culture editor, culture editor, restaurant critic, and national editor.”

Why yes, to answer your other question, we have made shawarma before, hence the whole “2.0” shit in the title of today’s post.

Here it is now!

Yes we made toum with that also. Sorry no toum for you today! You’ll survive.

As simple as this thing is to prepare there is no earthly reason why each and every one of you folks can’t make this.

DO IT!

“Sam Sifton’s Chicken Shawarma!”

“For the marinade:

2 lemons

1/2 cup olive oil

6 cloves of garlic, peeled, smashed and minced

2 teaspoons Spanish smoked paprika!

2 teaspoons of ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

a pinch of cinnamon

A hearty sprinkling of crushed red pepper

1 Tablespoon chopped parsley

1 teaspoon kosher salt 

Fresh ground pepper

For the chicken:

2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs

1 large red onion, peeled and sliced into 6 wedges

Chopped fresh parsley”

Let’s get after this shit.

We’ll build the marinade first.

Grab a couple of lemons. Zest one and juice both.

Lemons are bang on in season in California right now. Find a reason to sneak some into your cooking.

Then of course we will require some minced garlic.

Yes I do indeed love my ass some fresh garlic.

Followed by smoked Spanish paprika. Don’t fuck around here. Use the real shit. Pimenton!

Combine everything with the turmeric and olive oil.

Firmly get a hand on your chicken.

Maybe some fresh parsley.

Bag and tag, Yo!

Refrigerate for at least 1 hour but up to 12 hours. This is important. That lemon juice will break down the chicken if it sits in the marinade too long. Honestly? I think I marinated for about 6 hours before cooking.

Since the shawarma is simply not going to be enough for the complete meal, hows about we go ahead and make some tzatziki?

recipe courtesy of loveandlemons.com

“½ cup finely grated cucumber

1 cup thick whole milk Greek yogurt

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice (See? Again with the lemon juice)

½ tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 garlic clove, grated

¼ teaspoon sea salt

1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill (or you can be like my dumb ass and forget the dill at the store. Dammit!)”

Procure and shave your, protuberance.

Properly execute advanced castration technique.

You dudes in the audience are forgiven if that just made you cross your legs.

We are going to grate the cucumber and let it drain for several minutes. Then using a clean kitchen towel strain as much of the juice out as you can. Really work that fucker over. There’s a disturbing amount of cucumber juice in a cucumber.

Shit man! Make cucumber water with the juice. Get creative.

Add the strained cucumber to the yogurt and lemon juice. Season with salt and maybe some pepper. This is where you would also add in the dill. If you remembered to buy it.

Sonuvabitch.

Give it a thorough stir.

Cover and refrigerate until time to serve.

After the marinade has done its thing for however long you selected, grab a red onion.

Slice into about 6 wedges. Then we’re going to add it to the marinade and the chicken.

Really.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees and then we’re basically going to just dump all of this shit out onto a lubed baking dish.

Bake for 30 minutes in the preheated oven. 

Since we’re busting ass on everything else how about we take a break and use some store bought hummus for this meal.

Cool?

This shit here is dynamite.

No shit, the Haig’s brand of hummus is as close to homemade as you can buy. The ingredient list tells you too. Only thing is because it is organic, once you open the container it’s got a shelf life of about 4 days.

Thirty minutes have elapsed. Let’s take a look at the shawarma dealie.

OK. Well that looks fucking delicious.

Chop up the onion and chicken into bite sized bits.

I had some naan on hand so I grabbed a piece, some of the hummus and tzatziki and built to taste.

Let’s zoom in on the proceedings.

Absolutely incredible. There’s something about that cumin-paprika-cinnamon thing that just fucking works.

The tzatziki was an inspired idea because it’s got a zip and a brightness that cuts through the heavy spice of the shawarma. Use whatever bread delivery system you like. Pita of course would be epic. Rip off a piece of the bread and grab a big glop of hummus, shove that shit down your gullet then get after the chicken with the tzatziki sauce.

Best part? You can do everything with your goddamn hands.

Best fucking way to eat ever.

I am going to make this over and over and shit damn will this be a great and simple meal on the soon approaching game days.

Trust me implicitly. There’s a reason this fucker has over 25,000 5 star reviews. It’s close to flawless.

This week’s FUN holidays courtesy of “A Bit of Good News“: “July 20 is International Chess Day, World Jump Day, National Fortune Cookie Day, National Lollipop Day, National Moon Day and Space Exploration Day.”

I’ll let you sort that one out on your own.

Thanks as always for stopping by. That damn NFL season is practically knocking on our goddamn door now. By the end of this upcoming week every team should be fully in training camp.

Getting real close now.

You all enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

If you have a hankerin’ stop by again next week.

That one is a beauty.

Until then…