Another Ninja experiment

I know that the impression given by this blog over the past week or so is that all I do is experiment with the Ninja grill; this is far from true, but most of my activities aren't suitable for writing about (or they haven't yet reach fruition) whereas the cooking experiments are almost instantaneous and easy to write about.

As yesterday's Friday night supper was just my wife and I, I thought that we could experiment a little. I asked my wife to buy some shishlik sticks, i.e. cubes of chicken thigh threaded onto a stick, ready for easy grilling. The Greeks call this souvlaki; apart from the fact that they might use lamb instead of chicken, they also tend to thread cheese chunks (haloumi) and use a yoghurt dressing, which of course is a no-no for us. I've just discovered that shishlik basically means 'skewers'; these are also known in Israel as sichim, which apparently means 'skewers' in Arabic. The common Hebrew name is shipudim, which again means 'skewers'. Another common name is pargiot, which technically means young chickens but commonly means young chicken thighs. So how does one differentiate between deboned thighs that I cook in the slow cooker and chunks that are grilled? Presumably by shipudei pargiot.

So: she bought eight sticks, of which four I froze for later use and four I kept for dinner. Instead of placing them in a marinade as some recipes would have, I spread a little olive oil on them then sprinkled oregano. I then turned them over and sprinkled some more oregano. The olive oil was a mistake: the grilling takes place at a temperature well over the smoke point of olive oil. I should have used canola oil instead, although to be honest, I couldn't detect any detrimental taste or smoke from the olive oil.

The sticks were cooked by grilling them for seven minutes at 265°C, turned over and then another seven minutes grilling. The outside was pleasantly charred but inside something was slightly missing. It might be better to grill at a slightly lower temperature for longer, so that the inside cooks more. The sticks were accompanied by a simple cucumber/red bell pepper/yellow bell pepper/onion salad (plenty of vitamin C to help the body absorb the iron in the chicken); my wife had mashed potatoes whereas I had rice with onion and courgettes (no potatoes for me as they have high potassium).

It is becoming clearer that the Ninja is intended for couples, as mostly one can only cook two portions of whatever at a time. I have seen recipes for roast beef that obviously would feed more than a couple, but other dishes that I have cooked have only been two portions.