Garlic-butter Pita

Whenever I have people over for Friday nights I call it Shabbat-sorta. A Friday night dinner always feels distinct from any other night, so it deserves some kind of name. But calling my dinner actual Shabbat isn’t quite right either. We mix meat and dairy with a bit of reckless abandon and sometimes say all the prayers, sometimes don’t.

There’s always a sense of conflict, too: like my mind is telling me I should be going out, but for some reason, here I am choosing to stay in. When the weather drops into the range of “Air Will Easily Freeze Off Your Appendages”, I feel less of an issue not stepping outside. Staying in on Fridays feels more purposeful, more intentional, deserving of a title, and an attempt at consistency. After every Shabbat-sorta, I tell myself I want to throw more, but it’s hard to keep the regularity! One every once in a while feels good enough to me.

I built this whole meal around a very specific shawarma meat-skewer contraption-apparatus I’ve been seeing on Instagram. I’ve tried making shawarma at home in a sorta-version, either by grilling it or charring the chicken under a broiler, but it’s never nearly as good as what I could get at a pita shop. So in hopes that this new apparatus could bring me one step closer to real shawarma, I gave in to the new piece of cooking equipment that’s now shoved somewhere underneath my sink.

Turns out, this skewer pan thing is now my new best friend. I thought it was the coolest thing ever to slice and shred the chicken off of a literal spit for my friends right at the dinner table. It felt restaurant-y and sort of entertain-y yet also absurd in a good way? Mixing the tender pieces of dark meat chicken through a medley of spiced and roast vegetables, with plenty of pan juices, felt like the proper way to end a week. The options feel endless too with my new pan. Roitsserie chicken? Some kind of dessert? Who knows what else will come.

As for the rest of the menu: pickles, garlic-butter pita, labneh, and Dubai chocolate bars.

I would write more but alas I’m tied up for the next two weeks, so a bit briefer of a newsletter will have to suffice for now <3

Sorta,

Ryan