Week 5: Chicken Shasliks

What, precisely, do you think a chicken shaslik is? Turns out it's a fancy 70's name for the good ol' chicken skewer. With a bit of sauce on top.

Apparently this shaslik is going to be low calorie. I guess I can't argue with that as there isn't much happening with these chicken skewers.

Simple instructions, no fancy "creaming" with the sauce, I can do this! 

Ok so I started with dicing the chicken breasts. You know what to do. 

Then I got into the veggies. I added a couple of extra bits to the mix as I don't like capsicum, and it was feeling a little plain and needed jazzing up. You could use pretty much anything I guess, but I went with a bit of tomato and some mushroom. 

Shasliks are prepped and ready to go! This was super easy. Time to get the sauce happening. 

My old friend, the grater was back with a vengeance today. A teaspoon or so of ginger? Worked those biceps! I also went a little overboard with the grating and ended up with more than I needed.  Oh well. I love ginger so might as well just go with it. 

The soy sauce/sugar/etc mix. 

Sauce is done! it was lovely and thick, and tasted really good too. 

I decided to grill these on the bbq as we had quite a few of the shasliks to cook and you get that nice char grill effect on them. Also, I was hungry and the bbq cooks them faster. 

Brushing the sauce on. This was a little tricky with the short handled brush as it was pretty hot close to the chicken! Had to be quick with the brushing! 

Time to turn them over. Looking nice and crispy. 

Ok the shasliks are done! My biggest issue with this recipe was what to serve with the shasliks. Rice just seemed a little on the bland side so I decided to try my hand at cous cous. 

Cous Cous with apricots and crispy onions: 

Ingredients: 

• 500g couscous
• 1 vegetable stock cube
• 2 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 100g dried apricots , chopped
• 3 red onions , thinly sliced
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• about 500ml vegetable or sunflower oil
• zest and juice 1 lemon
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• small bunch coriander , chopped
• small handful mint , chopped, a few leaves reserved

1. Boil a kettle. Tip the couscous into a large bowl, crumble in the stock cube, then add the turmeric, cinnamon and apricots, and season well. Pour over 500ml boiling water, give everything a quick stir, then cover with cling film and leave for 5 mins.
2. Put half the sliced onions in a bowl with a good pinch of salt and the sugar, pour over enough boiling water to cover and leave to steep for 10 mins. (This will remove some of the onions' acidity and turn them a beautiful bright pink colour.)
3. Heat enough oil to come about 5cm up the side of a deep saucepan. Once hot, fry the remaining onions in batches for 1-2 mins until golden and crispy. Drain on kitchen paper and sprinkle with salt.
4. Use a fork to fluff up the couscous. Drain the steeped onions and stir through the couscous with the lemon zest and juice, olive oil and herbs. Tip onto a serving platter or bowl and scatter with the crispy onions and mint leaves.

Chopping the apricots. 

A large bowl of cous cous with not much else happening. This recipe is too easy! 

The final plate: Cous cous was a little messy and was a little hard to plate up cleanly and creatively, and I was concerned about the flavour, as without the lemon juice and olive oil step it was actually quite bland. But the lemon juice and olive oil, along with the coriander definitely kicked up the flavour levels and it went well with the sauce from the shasliks! A success!