weekend gyros

I decided to make myself some gyros on Sunday. I have this newly purchased harissa powder, plus a large bottle of something I'd found at the SSG Food Market called "skewered-lamb seasoning" (양꼬치 시즈닝, yang ggochi shijeuning). So along with the usual tzatziki sauce, I decided to make my own harissa-inspired red sauce, thus turning the gyro into something closer to a döner kebab (usually served with red + white sauce). I was keen to flavor the lamb up with the lamb seasoning and harissa powder as well.

I had bought solid lamb meat to grind in my grinder, but something went dreadfully wrong during the grinding process: the KitchenAid stand mixer's motor must have been weak or something because it started having difficulty grinding the lamb, despite my having frozen the lamb meat for 45 minutes to make it firmer for the grinder. When the KitchenAid's motor starts to sound as if it's straining, I've learned to expect that the machine will begin oozing out machinist's grease. Normally, this grease never goes farther than the back part of the grindworm (the corkscrew inside the grinder that pulls the meat forward to the propeller-shaped chopper and the extruder plate), but yesterday, some of the meat ended up getting mixed with grease, rendering it unusable. Giving up on doing the whole batch, I ended up grinding only two-thirds of my lamb, and I had to throw away a few greased-up chunks. I'm thinking that a grinder attachment might not be the best thing: I might have to go whole hog and buy a full-on, separate grinder with a powerful motor. Since I now know how worthwhile it is to grind your own meat, I think buying a separate grinder would be a good investment.

The red sauce I made was... okay. I didn't follow any of the usual practices for making harissa; I threw together some seasonings like salt and pepper, plus spices like cayenne, paprika, chipotle, chili flakes, and harissa powder. I added some garlic powder and onion flakes, then threw in some chopped red chilis (fresh, not dried), along with some fresh jalapeño-like "paprika" (that's what they were labeled on the bag). To get the blender going, I added a bit of water, apple-cider vinegar, and olive oil. Finally, I charred, peeled, and threw in some red bell pepper. After blitzing the whole thing in my blender, I tasted the result, and it was strangely bland, lacking umami. Last last step, then: as a cheat, I added a bunch of sriracha, and that improved the flavor instantly. Next time I try to make a red sauce, I think I might just stick to sriracha and harissa powder. Keep it simple.

I made my naan from scratch with the help of Charles's naan recipe. They came out uneven-looking as always, but as Mercutio said of his stab wound, "'Tis enough; 'twill serve."

I followed the recipe amounts for four flatbreads.

I also had to make tzatziki (awesome as always) and prep some veggies and feta:

naan, veggies, feta, tzatziki, and red sauce

The meat took time to make. First, there was the problem grinding it. Next, I mixed the meat with spices, panko bread crumbs, and olive oil, then blitzed the whole thing in my food processor to create a meat emulsion—a sort of paste that, in restaurants, is often molded into a log and put on a vertical rotisserie. I then bagged up the emulsion, flattened it out, and froze it for a couple of hours. When I took the meat out for slicing, it still wasn't completely frozen, but it was getting late, and I was getting hungry. I sliced the meat into strips and cooked the whole thing at once on my handy-dandy smokeless griddle, which has the surface area to cook lots of food at one time. Below are the results:

The lamb seasoning plus harissa powder resulted in meat that tasted much like how I normally make it with my own spice/seasoning blend. I'll have to look more closely at what ingredients are in the lamb seasoning. And the lamb itself was as fatty as the qeema (ground lamb) I usually buy. Below are two shots of the finished product:

tzatziki both on top of and under the meat—food-porn angle

Damn good meal, all in all. But now, it's Monday, and after having gone off the rails three times in rapid succession (luncheon last Thursday, Cheat Day Part II on Friday, and yesterday's gyros), I'm back to the discipline and feeling penitent.

Last note: as usual, my tzatziki rocked and rolled. I am apparently incapable of messing that up. It's the one preparation I can truly brag about. I'm not of the "shred your cukes" school of thought: for me, its easier to de-seed my cukes, then dice them into little cubes. This preserves the crunchy cell structure, and it keeps the tzatziki from becoming all watery. (When you shred your cukes, which a lot of people do, there's an extra step in which you put your cukes inside a clean cloth and squeeze out all the extra water—a step that, in my opinion, detracts from the final product. My way is less watery, and I also use salt sparingly as a way to keep water from coming out of the cukes. That said, you do you.)