Hello and welcome to another delicious recipe from us here at Midamar! This week, I decided that I'd take a little inspiration from my time working at a local middle eastern restaurant and make some shish tawook!
First things first, is it tawook or tauook? When I worked at the restaurant we always spelled it "tawook," but when it comes to transliteration of the arabic language, I think it's safe to say there is more than one way to spell a word. They are, however, the same recipe and flavor profile. For that reason, I think it's time we get to the cookin'!
For starters, we decided that we would make this dish in two separate ways. In the past, we'd serve this either as a sandwich or a platter. The beauty of this recipe is that it's quick and easy which makes for a perfect on the go sandwich or a nice sit down dinner with your family or friends.
When I worked at the restaurant, I'd always make my own variation of something that we had on the menu for myself for lunch. For the sandwich, I repeated that formula in the two different ways that I liked to make it. If there's anything you'd like to add to this sandwich or remove from the list of ingredients, as always, go ahead and make it your own way. When I worked at the restaurant we would often put middle eastern style pickles and pickled beet. I left those off this time because I personally am not a fan of those, but if you are I encourage you to add them! We decided to make two variations of the sandwich as well. On the first, we used a garlic sauce as the base and spread it thin on half of a piece of Syrian bread. The garlic sauce will act as an adhesive to not only hold chicken and veggies in place, but it will also help create a seal for our sandwich. Once the desired amount of sauce and fillings are in place, it's as simple as folding in one end and tightly rolling the sandwich. The next variation is one that we'd make for the restaurant; instead of using garlic sauce, we'd use hummus as the adhesive. Admittedly, the hummus works better to hold the fillings and sandwich together, but it doesn't add that nice garlicky element that the garlic sauce brings. we also decided to go a little healthier with this variation and put salata as our veggies. Salata is very easy to make and there are millions of variations of it. For ours, all we did was take a premade salad mix, added cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, and red onion. Then we added some olive oil and lemon juice to brighten things up a bit and that was it. So, we now know how to make sandwiches, let's try it as a platter!
Traditionally, platters are served with plenty of rice. However, with it being summer, we wanted to go a slightly healthier route and omitted the rice and instead served our chicken with the salata, mentioned above, hummus, and some Syrian pita bread. And that really is it for the platter! The always look delicious and complex when ordering at a restaurant, but the reality is that platters are a super simple and appetizing way to serve most grilled meats!
That's it for us this week, we hope you enjoy this recipe and be sure to check back next week for our brand new recipe!
