Sunday Cookbook Adventures: Michael Psilakis's Amazing Gyros

I picked up a kick-ass new cookbook a little over a week ago, and it didn’t take long flipping through the pages before I knew exactly what I wanted for dinner this weekend. The book is Michael Psilakis’s awesome How to Roast a Lamb, and the recipe that was calling to me was for Kefi Lamb Gyros. The finished product may not look like much, but trust me when I tell you that it will rock your world...

Little did I know when I chose this recipe that it’s actually a pretty good tour of the book. While the recipe itself only has few ingredients, each of those ingredients has several components of its own. Thus, while trying to experience Gyros, I also got to know a new recipe for Greek Salad, found a new way of making Tzatziki, and discovered the joys of Garlic Confit...
The first key ingredient, which I took care of the day before, was the lamb gyro mix. Luckily I started in the morning, because one of the ingredients in this recipe is garlic puree, which is made from garlic confit, which takes a couple hours to make (longer if you’re crazy enough to peel 3 cups of garlic cloves by hand…). I made a full batch (and posted the recipe here because I think everyone should try it) before realizing that I only needed about 6 cloves for my purposes in this dish.
I have no regrets, though, since the stuff is amazing. If you enjoy roasted garlic slathered on baguette, then garlic confit will make you shun roasted garlic forever in favor of its more elegant cousin. (Plus, it gives you a nice stash of garlic oil to play with…) Once I finished the garlic confit, I broke out the ol’ meat grinder for my pork shoulder and lamb shoulder...
... and grilled off a couple slices of onions (for what would not be the last time this weekend).
With that, the mixture was ready to come together. In addition to ground pork, ground lamb, the (mashed) garlic confit, and the grilled onions, the mixture includes scallion, parsley, dill, chives, eggs, Dijon mustard, ground coriander, and ground chilies.
Everything is combined, then pushed into a 7" x 11" baking dish...
After 45 minutes in the oven and an overnight rest in the fridge, your meat mixture will look a bit on the funky side... like this:
When it's time to make they gyros, the mixture is sliced in preparation for frying in spiced oil... but we are still a long, long way from that time...
The next of the many components was the tzatziki. I make tzatziki pretty often, but mine bears little resemblance to this version. The recipe calls for quite a bit of distilled white vinegar (which was not among the 11 vinegars in my pantry when I was preparing this... so now I have 12 kinds of vinegar...), Greek yogurt, cucumber, dill, shallots, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and kosher salt...
The cucumber is peeled and diced,
while the dill, garlic, and shallots go into the food processor with the vinegar.
Everything is then stirred together...
... and you're left with a nice, creamy, tangy, super-garlicky tzatziki.
Next up was the Red Wine and Feta Vinaigrette to go on the Greek Salad that goes on your Gyro. Into a blender go red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, basil, thyme, crumbled feta, garlic, shallots, Greek oregano, more grilled onions (not pictured, because they were grilling), salt, and pepper. When things are puréed, the olive oil is drizzled in with the motor running...
... and you have a lovely Greek vinaigrette.
Alrighty... Just a couple more components. Next up was the Greek Salad itself, which features 18 ingredients, including iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, grilled onions, cucumber, pepperoncini, capers, parsley, Greek oregano, shaved fennel, red onions, Greek olives, roasted red pepper, scallions, and feta cheese... Oh, and that vinaigrette above.
To make a salad, everything but the pepperoncini and feta are combined and dressed...
... with the pepperoncini and feta sprinkled over to finish.
This is actually the first Greek salad I've ever been impressed by, so I'm happy to have it in the repertoire... but we're not done yet. The next component is the spiced oil. Fennel seeds, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, and black peppercorns are toasted and ground...
... then combined with olive oil. This will be used to pan-sear the gyro meat and infuse it with an extra hit of deliciousness right at the end (which will not be pictured because I had too much going on...).
I also made a batch of fresh pitas using my go-to recipe from Flatbreads & Flavors... The dough rose like crazy in my warm kitchen...
... and the rounds puffed perfectly in my new toaster oven (which I brilliantly purchased to avoid heating the whole oven (and thus the whole kitchen) for an hour just to cook off a couple fresh pitas for dinner).
When the pitas are done, they go on a hot grill to char a little...
Finally, it's time to assemble. The meat goes into a pan with the spiced oil, and is placed atop a layer of tzatziki that you've schmeared across the pita...
This is topped with a handful of freshly-dressed Greek salad (pepperoncini omitted because I felt they would overpower things)... and there you have it:
Because I made toaster-oven-sized pitas, they were too full to really wrap and were eaten taco-style, but could be semi-wrapped up for easy transport... The first bite pretty much blew my mind. Each component was good, but not insanely so... then those components came together to be ridiculously delicious. This is definitely a case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. I have no words, really, for how fantastic these flavors were together. The tzatziki, vinaigrette, spiced oil, and all of the awesomeness of the meat are seriously the perfect balance of flavors. It may be humble to look at, but I think I could eat this for dinner every night for a very long time before I even began to lose interest... Speaking of which, off to make a couple more pitas for my leftover gyros tonight.