Easy Greek Recipe You’ll Love – Fresh, Simple & Delicious

I'm not Greek but I lived decades ago next to a Greek family and the mum was an amazing cook and she taught me a few things and this is one of them and you know what I love most about this? It's simple, the flavours are simple, there's a handful of ingredients and it just tastes so good and it's really easy to make and this is how I do it. So with the tzatziki it's an overnight process or at least 10 hours. So over a bowl I put a strainer and then either some paper towel or a bit of cheesecloth and then I put about two cups of full fat Greek yogurt into the strainer on the paper towel and what I do now is I leave that in the fridge because I want this yogurt as thick as I can get it so I put that in the fridge and again for at least 10 hours. So it's the next day and look at all the liquid that has accumulated in the bottom of the bowl from the yogurt, quite a lot and this will make your tzatziki much less watery if you strain the yogurt like that. Now I tip the yogurt into a bowl, remove the paper towel and it's gone so thick almost like ricotta cheese and that's exactly what you want. Now for the add-ins which are not many. So I have one Lebanese cucumber here which I'll just peel, cut in half, remove the seeds and then on the coarse side of a grater grate this cucumber. And I forgot to mention that this tzatziki will last as long as the use by or best before date on your yogurt and that's usually at least a couple of weeks. And then I just chop it to make sure it's all as fine as I can get it and then with clean hands and I generally do this over the sink, squeeze the cucumber really, really well and that will release all the liquid because cucumber has so much liquid. And when you can't physically squeeze anymore, pop it into the yogurt. And now I've got one clove of garlic that I'll just finely microplane in or if you've got a garlic crusher or press and you want it really nice and crushed up so it mixes well with the sauce. Now a little bit of salt to taste, you can always add more later. One tablespoon of lemon juice and one tablespoon of olive oil. Now totally optional, you can just mix it all and that's a delicious tzatziki or you can add some fresh herbs, whatever you like. A lot of people use dill in tzatziki but you only need a little bit. So I'm putting like a tablespoon of dill in here. I wouldn't go too hard on the dill though, it's got a really strong flavor. Mint's also nice in a tzatziki or just by itself. And then all I do is give it a good mix and just taste it. I'm going to put one more cucumber in. The cucumber looks so pretty in it, oh that looks lovely. And I'll pop some in a serving bowl and the rest in the fridge. Decorate it with a little bit of dill and maybe a little bit of lemon rind from the squeezed lemons. And that is how I was told or taught to do tzatziki. And you can use lamb shoulder, pork shoulder, pork loin or chicken thighs or breast. I prefer chicken thighs for the souvlaki. And what I've got here is just some pork shoulder today that has got no bone in it, it's one kilo. And what I'm going to do is just chop it into chunks that will be able to be threaded on a skewer. Not too big but not too small neither. And when marinating anything it's best to use like a glass bowl or a ceramic bowl but not a metal one because it could react with the marinade. And I do like the fat in the pork shoulder. Now for the marinade, it's really simple and that's what I just love about Greek food. So two tablespoons of lemon juice, three tablespoons of olive oil, a good teaspoon of oregano, one clove of garlic either just crushed with a garlic crusher or really really finely chopped to a paste or just easy like this using a microplane. A good teaspoon of salt, a good sprinkle of black pepper and lastly most important a third a cup of white wine. And that's all there is to the marinade. Now this needs to go in the fridge covered for at least 24 hours and you know you can leave it like this up to 48 hours but 24 hours is what I'm going to do now. And the chicken I do in exactly the same way and I like to use chicken thigh fillets. Now normally I wouldn't marinate chicken overnight but this marinade because I think of just the small amount of lemon juice in it holds up for actually 48 hours but I'd use it after 24 hours and seriously chicken doesn't need as much time to marinate so you can just use it after four or five hours. This is how I love eating a Greek salad. It is so delicious and all you need is a handful of ingredients but they need to be sort of nice and fresh and at their best. So I've got some cos lettuce here that I'm just finely, well pretty finely shredding and as much or as little as you please. And what I really love in a Greek salad is green capsicums or green peppers and I like to just remove that white pith bit which sometimes I find can be bitter and then I just slice these into thin strips and to make it easier to eat I cut them in half. Then add these capsicums to the bowl and then just two or three small tomatoes and I just like cutting these into sort of like chunks, bite-sized chunks and you can make this the day before you wish to serve it because if you don't dress it this stays crisp. The next ingredient is just a few kalamata olives, not too many, just a few. And the final ingredient in that salad is some Greek feta cheese or Greek style feta cheese which holds up really well in a Greek salad and just chopped into chunks. And the dressing for this is even simpler. So this dressing is also what I'll base the souvlaki with when I cook it and it's simply one part lemon juice to three parts olive oil. So whatever you put in in lemon juice put three times that amount in of olive oil. Just a little pinch of salt, a tiny pinch, a little pinch of pepper and a pinch of oregano and just give that a stir until the lemon juice and the olive oil are emulsified and when you're ready to serve or even an hour or two beforehand it holds up well this salad. Just drizzle, be generous with this, drizzle it all over the salad, so good. And now what I do is thread it on some skewers. I'll show you this now if you've got a charcoal grill that is the way to go but we do have one but it's very windy outside today and to be honest I want to show you how I do these in the fry pan because I feel that's like most people would have the fry pan. Now these are just metal skewers like what I use to check cakes actually and I'm just threading the souvlaki, the pieces of pork through on the long way, not the short way but the long way if that makes sense. But if you've got those really big skewers that go on the barbecue that'd be awesome on the barbecue and you know this is delicious on a barbecue to be honest. But it's still really yum cooked in on the stove and what I like to do is just take a bit of paper towel and just lightly pat them dry. I wouldn't worry about this if I was doing it on the barbecue but because I'm doing it on the stove I want to get a nice sear on it so I don't want it to be too wet and the marinade's already permeated through all of that meat. So once I can feel some heat radiating from the pan then I just add a little bit of oil and you don't want to overcrowd the pan when you cook these. And after a couple of minutes the meat should lift off easily not stick and that's a good indication that you can turn it and it's starting to get some lovely color on it. As it's cooking you can baste it with the oregano, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper marinade and after a couple of minutes I'll check the other side and they're starting to get some lovely caramelization on the pork. The beauty about doing it on the barbecue is you don't have a stove to clean afterwards and they're nearly done and that's only been like not even 10 minutes. And just give them one more little brush with the marinade. Yep looks good. This is how I love to eat it. Nice serve of greek salad, a couple of lovely kebabs and a little bit of tzatziki. Oh you can put it on there or on the side. Just for the photo I'm going to put it on there but normally I put it on the side. Thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoy this just a really simple delicious family friendly meal. Hopefully I'll see you again soon. Souvlaki actually means on a stick I think but you don't have to put it on the stick like lately after work I just get a bowl of greek salad, fry off a few pieces of meat be it chicken or pork shoulder and throw that on the salad and have that for a quick dinner. It's so delicious, it's healthy and it's really easy to make.