The Mediterranean · Volume 03, The Aegean and the Contested Table
Souvlaki
Shared, across Greece and Cyprus alike
Illustration
- Time
- Hands on 15 minutes · Waiting 1 hour
- Researched
- 11 sources cited
The skewer concept is genuinely ancient Greek. The classical words obelós and obelískos, skewer and small skewer, are the root of the Latin subula and ultimately "souvlaki," with records of offal souvlaki and, later, Constantinople street vendors selling souvlaki with pita. The rotating vertical gyros spit is not ancient at all: a patent for a vertical skewer roaster was filed by George Amanatides in New York in 1949, enabled by the shift from charcoal to electric heating with a motorised spit. So the skewer is ancient and Greek; the rotating vertical gyros spit is a twentieth-century invention, and its electrification and naming history is partly American-diaspora.
As tradition built it
Serves 5. Marinate 1 hour; about 15 minutes on the coals.
Ingredients
- 1 kg pork neck, or lamb shoulder
- 60 ml olive oil
- 4 tbsp lemon juice
- to taste black pepper
- 1 tbsp oregano, plus extra to finish
- to taste salt
To serve
Method
- Rinse the meat and cut it into cubes of about 3cm.
- Marinate about 1 hour in the oil, lemon juice, pepper and oregano.
- Thread onto metal skewers; soak wooden ones in water first.
- Light the charcoal and wait for the flames to die down. Grill on every side, brushing with the marinade between turns.
- Off the grill, sprinkle with salt and more oregano if you like.
- Serve in pitta with lemon, tzatziki and salad.
Notes
The recipe is Ivy Liacopoulou's, a Cypriot home cook at Kopiaste, who notes that pickles go in the pitta in Cyprus. Myrsini Lambraki, Greece's first Master Grill Chef, marinates neck 12 to 20 hours in paprika, coriander, garlic powder, mustard, wine, vinegar and oil and salts it in the marinade. Argiro Barbarigou gives 3 to 4 minutes a side. No source read uses fresh garlic.
What a modern chef changes
The charcoal bed treated as a single fire with two zones, and the fat rendered deliberately
Rung 5
Method
- Bank the coals for a hot centre and a cooler edge, so you can sear the cubes hard at first and finish them gently without drying out, rather than one uniform heat throughout the cook.
- Baste continuously while turning, as the sourcing behind this chapter specifies as essential, rather than once at the start; this is what actually bastes and renders the fat rather than leaving it to drip away unused.
- Rest briefly off the heat before serving, a short pause that lets the juices settle, the same principle any grilled meat benefits from, even a fast-cooked cube this size.
Notes
Part Four