Identity Crisis...Yogurt Chicken from Turkey

At the end of July, Jeremy and I had two very special visitors to South Korea!  

Our MOMS came to visit us on vacation!

We had an awesome vacation spending time with them, and one of the things we did was take them to Itaewon, the foreigner district in Seoul for some shopping and lunch.  

 While they were here, we went to a beautiful Turkish restaurant called Kervan.  My meal at that restaurant inspired me to try to cook some Turkish food for this evening.  Before I get started on my recipe, I wanted to share a few beautiful photos from the restaurant.  

I love Turkish Tiles!  They are so beautiful!

The kitchen behind clear glass

Protect yourself from the Evil Eye!

Our food was delicious, and the prices, although they are what you would expect in Itaewon, could have been worse.  I have not stopped thinking about that meal in a month, and decided that tonight, it is time to make it.  Although, the recipe I found at yummly.com is probably not anywhere near the same as what I had in the restaurant, I know there are a few things in common. I am making Turkish Yogurt Chicken for dinner tonight with the homemade yogurt that I made this week.  

The meal at the restaurant was very nice.  We had hummus, Jeremy had lamb, Mom and I shared the yogurt chicken, and one of my favorite parts was dessert.  We did have baklava, but Jeremy and Mom also had Turkish Coffee.  I became familiar with it when I was in Kosova in 2000 and 2004, and although I can't drink the stuff, I have turned both of them onto it.  

Now what I can drink an what I thoroughly enjoy is drinking Turkish Tea.  I have a beautiful tea set in the United States that I bought when I went to Kosovo in 2004, and I miss being able to pull it out and brew black tea in my double decker tea pot, and serving it in my pretty little glasses with sugar cubes.  Well this experience brought me back to having tea in Korean living rooms, and enjoying conversation with friends.  

My tea was deslish, and got me to think about a great experience in my life, that I was able to share with my family a little bit at this restaurant.  

Anyway, Here is my experience cooking Turkish Yogurt Chicken:

This recipe needs at least 6 hours of marinating time, so think ahead when you want to try it!

Turkish Yogurt Chicken

Since I have never made this recipe before, I pretty much followed the recipe, all the way down to grating the onion.
I was only making three chicken breasts, but I didn't modify the recipe at all, just to make measurments simple.  I started by raiding my cupboard for the spices I would need, so I could open them and get them all ready to scoop.  Here is a list of the ingredients:
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon cinnamon
I used about a tablespoon of minced garlic,
1/2 cup grated onion
I did three tablespoons of Lime juice (deviation from the recipe, as it calls for lemon juice but I didn't have any)
1 cup plane yogurt (I used my homemade)

First you get 1 cup of yogurt into a bowl that you can mix.  My homemade yogurt was very thick and creamy.  It worked grate.

Next you combine all of the spices, garlic, onion, citrus juice, and oil mentioned in the recipe.

Yummy looking huh?

Stir it until well combined:

Okay, that looks a little better!

Next take up to 5-6 chicken breasts, and put them in a dish where they can marinate.  

And add the sauce over the top.  Make sure to move them around a little so the sauce is all around them.  

Okay, proof I made too much sauce for three chicken breasts...you can hardly
see the chicken breasts in there!

Lastly you cover the chicken and let the marinade do it's thing for 6 or more hours in the refrigerator!

Once you are done marinading, you can choose how you wish to cook this chicken.  You can bake it, grill it,  or broil it, however you desire.  I am going to bake it.

Okay, so I accidentally published this before I was ready, and I don't know how to go back and take it off and just save it in draft form, so I have just had half of a recipe up all day.  I am sorry about that.
My plan was to have this chicken for dinner, and cook it after it had been marinating all day, to serve for our evening meal, but plans changed a little bit.  We were out and about trying to get my new computer fixed, and wound up going to an Indian restaurant.  Click here to see the review for that restaurant..

When I got home, I put this mixture in the oven at 175 degrees C, or about 350 F uncovered.  After about

15 minutes, the top was starting to get darker than the rest, so I took it out and covered it with foil.  I will pull it out of the oven when the internal temperature of the chicken is at 160 F.

This is what it looks like right out of the oven:

From here, I am just putting the lid on and waiting for tomorrow.  I used maybe a whole tablespoon of cayenne pepper, so this one is SPICY!

THE NEXT DAY....

Since we ate Indian food last night for dinner, we turned our chicken into lunch today.

First I washed and sliced up some cherry tomatoes and some cucumber.  I also got the Simplot tortillas that we are going to wrap them in. for all you Idaho people, you know the name.

I sliced up the chicken into strips.

 

Next, I made some lime sour cream to cool the spice down just a little.

I put it all together,

And rolled it up.

It tasted really yummy!  The flavors were not something that is in our every day palate, but it really turned out well.  I think Next time I make this, I will try to grill it, rather than just baking it in the yogurt sauce!

Enjoy!  

<3