Pork souvlaki with cucumber salad and tzatziki
Cretan food culture has a crystal-clear gender division that one does not want to mess with: women cook in the kitchen, men cook outdoors, in charge of meat. As a person with dubious macho credentials and a famous kitchen dweller, I was absolutely terrified cooking meat in the sun in the company of a bunch of famous local shepherds. Luckily, the souvlaki tasted good and I managed to win over the sceptics. You can do the same, trust me.
6 people
Serving size
Ingredients
1kg pork shoulder or neck, sinew and skin removed and cut into 2.5cm dice
8 skewers, soaked in water for a couple of hours or overnight
Marinade:
60ml lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp dried mint, plus extra to finish
1 tsp ground clove
1 tsp ground star anise
1 ½ tsp cumin
1 tsp flaked chilli
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Salad:
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 small red onion, half roughly chopped (60g net) and half thinly sliced (60g net)
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp white wine vinegar
6 Lebanese cucumbers, cut on an angle into ½ cm slices (600g net)
2 green peppers, cut into thin strips ½ cm thick (370g net)
½ tsp nigella seeds
15g dill, roughly chopped
15g mint, roughly chopped
Yoghurt sauce:
1 courgette, coarsely grated (200g net)
250g Greek yoghurt
2 tbsp olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
60ml lemon juice
50g unsalted butter
Salt
Method
- Soak the skewers over night to stop them from burning.
- Place all the ingredients for the marinade in a bowl with 1 teaspoon of salt. Mix well, pour over the pork and leave in the fridge, covered, for 2 hours or overnight.
- Preheat the oven to 200C.
- Skewer the pork whilst heating up your ridged grill plate, making sure to ventilate your kitchen. Ideally you would use a BBQ to grill the pork but a ridged grill plate works well.
- Place the skewers in batches on the grill and cook for 5 minutes, turning so that all sides are nicely charred. Transfer to a large baking tray, 30 by 40 centimetres, and finish cooking in the oven for 20 minutes, until the meat is cooked through and tender.
- To make the yoghurt sauce, mix the courgettes with ¼ teaspoon of salt and leave to drain for 5 minutes. Gently squeeze out the excess liquid and place in a medium bowl. Stir through the yoghurt, oil, garlic, lemon juice and ¾ of a teaspoon of salt. Place the butter in a small pan and cook on a medium heat until it bubbles, turns a light golden brown and has a nutty aroma. Remove from the heat, set aside for 5 minutes to cool and then stir into the yogurt. Sprinkle a little dried mint on top of the yoghurt and keep in the fridge until ready to use.
- To make the salad, place the garlic, chopped onion, oil and vinegar in a pestle and mortar with ¾ teaspoon of salt. Crush to make a paste and set aside. Place the sliced onions in a large bowl with the cucumber, peppers, nigella seeds and the paste. Mix the dill and mint in just before serving, alongside the skewers and yogurt sauce.