At Organic Spirit we are passionate about using organic produce for all of our organic wedding buffets, canapé parties and all our organic catering, part of our ethos is to waste as little as possible, so I’m going to show you how you can use one chicken to create three delicious Greek meals.
Why Greece? Well this summer we are staying in Kent to relocate our London catering company to Kent the garden of England, but having been to Greece several times and influenced by some great Greek friends during university, I fell in Love with its cuisine and seeing as we can’t make a visit this year Greece has to come to our kitchen instead!
I also want to show you how with a little imagination you can make one chicken last for so many meals and using the whole of the chicken so nothing is wasted of that little chooks life.
The basics
Choose one Organic Free Range Chicken – ours came from Ocado at £9.55 for a 1.4kg bird
Day 1 – Greek Style Barbequed Whole Roast Chicken with Greek Salad, Tatziki and Taverna style Potatoes
First I marinade the chicken in a Greek style marinade of
4tbs of freshly squeezed orange juice
4tbs brandy
4tbs honey
1tsp oregano
1tsp dried thyme
1 dried bay leaf crumbled
And rubbed it all over and leave it for at least 12hrs but ideally overnight.
We then built a special barbeque for roasting a whole chicken on our basic BBQ (instructions can be found on You Tube) and cooked it for about an hour, but check to make sure the chicken is cooked.
I then made a lovely Greek salad using Feta cheese and a mix of tiger tomatoes, yellow cherry tomatoes and baby plum tomatoes, cucumber and black Greek olives and red onion that had been steeped in white wine vinegar and oil to remove some of its harshness.
A side of tatziki accompanied this of cucumber, rich Greek yogurt and plenty of garlic. Taverna style
potatoes are so called as they are served in pretty much every Greek taverna across Greece and are really just sautéed potatoes cooked in lots of olive oil with the ubiquitous herbs that epitomise Greek cuisine of thyme and oregano which grow wild across most of Greece.
The barbequed chicken was so intensely flavourful and mouth-watering and this was a delicious summer meal to have on a summers weekend day when you have more time for cooking on your hands! It is perfect for a buffet catering style event.
Day 2 – Chicken Gyros
Day 2 – Chicken Gyros
There is a lot of argument about who actually invented the kebab with Greece, Turkey and Iran all claiming to be the originators of this delicious meaty sandwich, but as my Greek friends will probably read this we will say they did and in Greece they call them gyros. You’ll find many a drunken teenager staggering through the streets of Laganas and Faliraki late at night clutching a gyros in an attempt to mop up the fishbowl of the mai tai cocktails and ouzo shots they’ve just consumed and there is probably nothing more tastier in the world at that moment but I chose this dish for its ease of ingredients and quick prep time as I’d been at work all day today!
We bought some shawarma flat breads but you could use pitta if you can’t find these. We simply stripped some of the delicious meat from the chicken left overs and put that into the wrap along with some left over tatziki and some salad. Traditionally gyros often contains chips but there were none left but it would make a lovely addition and non traditionally I fancied a bit of heat so we added some home made chili sauce from some birds eye chilies we grew in our poly tunnel.
Day 3 – Avgolemono (Egg Lemon soup)
My Greek friends will chuckle at this as my nickname is Egg (don’t ask!) and all my Greek Friends would call me Avgo which means egg in Greek. Now egg lemon may sound like an odd combination but trust me when I say this is a winning soup!
I started by boiling the chicken carcass to make a stock adding the holy trinity of celery, onions and carrots – I removed the oranges from the carcass as I didn’t want that to fight against the lemony flavour of the soup. You simply make a soup with the broth, sautéed carrot and onion and orzo pasta (or rice) and then at the end of cooking add 1-2 eggs whisked with 5tbs of fresh lemon juice and whisk it into the soup very slowly. It’s a Greek classic not to be missed.
So there you have it and of course if you are interested in organic catering in Kent then do get in touch with Organic Spirit directly who can cater for all of your wedding, buffet and canapé party needs. And finally…
Kalí óreksi as they say in Greece !
