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Shish Taouk With Toum
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gracoman View Drop Down
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Joined: 09 August 2013
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    Posted: 04 February 2014 at 07:16
This dish can be found almost everywhere in Middle Eastern countries.  Translated as skewered chicken, it is much more than that. It is served as street food and as an elegant dinner plated alongside rice.  There are hundreds of recipes for this wonderful dish.  Some are more lemony, some more garlicky, some with more tomato. 

I went with a recipe I had been looking at for some time now and it was an awesome surprise.  I'd thought I was putting together another form of chicken kebab with vegetables.  No. no, no, no, no. This dish was over the top delicious, will be made over and over again, and taught me a few things.

The chicken marinade:
Greek style yogurt, garlic, tomato paste, lemon juice, kosher salt, ground coriander, smoked paprika, za'atar and EVOO.



Marinate the chicken overnight



Put together this ethereal, garlicky, lemony Toum.  Some recipes call for a paste-like consistency.  This is more of a sauce.  A sauce that may very well go with many, many things.  I tried a bit last night on pasta and it was wonderful.



Prepped and ready to go



The stars of this show on the cooker.
Marinated Chicken Thighs, Halloumi Cheese, Peppadew Peppers, Zucchini, Crimini Mushrooms, Cippolini Onions, Yellow Squash and lemons.



Plated on gourmet pita bread with a healthy dose of Toum, dotted with peppadew's and sprinkled with fresh thyme.  Squeeze on some grilled lemon juice and go to town.  The original plan was to prepare this with fresh pita/syrian bread but the yeast I was sure I had was not there.  It was Superbowl day and there simply was not enough time to pull this off after discovering my mistake.  Although I was able to find some "gourmet" pita bread, it was not the same. I will not make that mistake again.  This dish deserves the best one can do.


So much flavor from so many different areas.  The halloumi is a grillable/fryable cheese that does not melt, but grill marks and softens nicely.  The peppadew's are somehow sweet and hot at the same time.  The marinated chicken is a wonder and, as stated above, the toum sauce is positively ethereal. 

This dish has been put into my rotation forever.

Excuse the brief background on this amazing dish.  The time just isn't there and I wanted to get this posted.

Cheers
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HistoricFoodie View Drop Down
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Joined: 21 February 2012
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Points: 4940 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote HistoricFoodie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 04 February 2014 at 20:59
Well, you better make the time, GM. Somebody has to wipe the drool off my keyboard. 

In other words, really nice post.

A couple of comments for those who may be unfamiliar with this style of food. Peppadews can usually be found at any market with an olive bar. You can't miss their vibrant color. 

If following a printed recipe for toum, remember that less is more. Most of the time there is much more garlic than appeals to American tastes. The reason being that toum is more often used as a marinade than as a sauce. 

For example, the toum recipe in The Lebanese Cookbook calls for two heads of garlic, used with 2 cups of oil. Friend Wife and I are garlic freaks, but even we'd find that all but inedible used as a sauce. So it's better to start slow. You can always add more garlic, but once it's in there it's in there.
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Hoser View Drop Down
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Joined: 06 February 2010
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Points: 3454 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Hoser Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 February 2014 at 00:26
Outstanding Graco!

I'm a nut for kebabs and this is one I just can't pass up....do you have a recipe for us...amount-wise ?
Go ahead...play with your food!
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gracoman View Drop Down
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I used this recipe  http://food52.com/recipes/5032-shish-taouk-with-toum-garlic-sauce

HF is correct in his Toum comments. However, this toum is a sauce, not a paste, and only calls for 6 cloves of garlic.  Being a garlic fiend myself, I used 10. It was great freshly made on the chicken and veggies, and mellowed enough to use on pasta the next day.  Yeah, the pasta was garlicky but I loved it.  I don't know if the people around me liked it as much as I did LOL

The only failing here was the pita.  These commercially prepared "gourmet" breads were not bad,  but only 6".  Good gravy.  Gourmet pita bread.  What next?
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HistoricFoodie View Drop Down
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Points: 4940 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote HistoricFoodie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 February 2014 at 08:28
What next? Why, lamb shawana, of course.
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HistoricFoodie View Drop Down
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Points: 4940 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote HistoricFoodie Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 05 February 2014 at 08:37
I just went to the linked site, Gracoman. Not for nothing, but your final photo shows off the dish much better than the site.

With your pix I have a good feel what the dish looks like, whereas the original just looks like a mass of who-knows-what?

I just wanted to go on record.
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Joined: 06 February 2010
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Points: 3454 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Hoser Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06 February 2014 at 02:22
Originally posted by HistoricFoodie HistoricFoodie wrote:

I just went to the linked site, Gracoman. Not for nothing, but your final photo shows off the dish much better than the site.

With your pix I have a good feel what the dish looks like, whereas the original just looks like a mass of who-knows-what?

I just wanted to go on record.

I agree wholeheartedly...the G-man did a much better job of showing off this dish than the web site did.
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Go ahead...play with your food!
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gracoman View Drop Down
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Points: 885 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote gracoman Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 February 2014 at 19:18
Thanks for the accolades on the pix.  I don't typically spend much (or any) time on food pix.  We are usually frothing at the mouths a bit to  much for that but I just got a new camera so this time I took the trouble to place the dish on an African mat Wink.  Also, I am engaged in a high calorie burning occupation so my plated dishes are usually overflowing.

Lately, I have been immersed in Ethiopian dishes, but work has been absolutely nutz ever since the floods last year.  At least that is my excuse.  I hope to post something in this regard soon. 
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Points: 9345 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote TasunkaWitko Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 07 February 2014 at 22:32
Gman, you did an incredible job with this; I know what you mean about usually not having time for "nice" photos, it happens to me all the time - but your photography here is amazing from beginning to end, and I can almost reach right into the screen and snatch one off the plate!

Thanks for posting a link to the recipes, as I'd like to try this one day. It looks similar to a recipe I've seen for chicken tikka, but I am by no means an expert.

Once again, bravo!
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africanmeat View Drop Down
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Points: 910 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote africanmeat Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09 February 2014 at 06:01
Man this looks so good .
it is a great dish ,now i will have to do it (my wife saw the photos )
Ahron
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gracoman View Drop Down
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Originally posted by africanmeat africanmeat wrote:

Man this looks so good .
it is a great dish ,now i will have to do it (my wife saw the photos )
I thought you might be familiar with this dish.  I was not.  It certainly turned my head around.
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