I had lunch with a friend last week at a little place in Bellevue called the Mediterranean Kitchen. It only took one whiff to immediately recognized what I had been craving forever - garlic. And oh, what a place to dive into garlic. It felt like I burned my tongue on the garlic dipping sauce. I was tasting garlic the next morning - but that's beside the point! I left wanting more.
This particular friend that I was eating with happens to be an amazing chef and as he scarfed down an uncountable number of chicken wings and as I plowed through a divine dish of chicken sauteed with red onions and basil, we were once again discussing recipes and food. I believe I was telling him that it felt like I had finally found my personal cuisine nirvana when he shrugged and said - "well, how can you go wrong marinating chicken in lots of garlic and fresh lemon juice?" Epiphany - how could I forget such sage advice? I knew this - and had forgotten. I had strayed from the path of simplicity into cookbooks of dense complexity. Garlic. Lemon. Perfect.
And so the next night I marinated my chicken, grilled it up and served it with a yogurt tahini sauce in pita bread. My sister's children ate their weight in chicken. I hid the leftovers.
Marinade:
Juice of two lemons with the left over skins cut up and thrown into the mix.
About a glass of white wine
4-5 heads of garlic, crushed and minced
fresh oregano from the garden, roughly cut up
a little bit of olive oil
salt and pepper
10 boneless chicken thighs.
Marinade for at least 3-4 hours
Tahini yogurt sauce: let this sit awhile before you serve it (From Deborah Madison)
1 cup plain greek yogurt
2 T lemon juice plus about 1 tsp of lemon zest
1 T tahini sauce - add more or less if you like
2 tsp. crushed and minced garlic
salt to taste
Thursday, April 30, 2009
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