Chicken Shawarma?

"What smells so good?"

Music to my ears. The answer was my latest attempt at imitating Prince's chicken shawarma recipe. My boyfriend works in Arlington, and whenever I have a Friday off and he doesn't (ie: all summer), I head out there to have lunch with him. There is a Lebanese restaurant there called Prince's that has the most delicious chicken shawarma. The problem, of course, is that real chicken shawarma requires a spit and who knows what else, so I've done my best to imitate the flavors and spices in the recipe.

First, I cut up an entire onion, because, hey, that's what I have. When it comes to recipes I generally look at the ingredients and view the measurements as suggestions. Even the ingredients are, well, open to interpretation, especially since I'm such a picky eater. So, hey, a whole onion, and a whole serrano chile.

I would like to note here that, for the first time ever, I actually teared up while chopping up an onion. I thought this must be a myth, or that everyone else was just a wimp, but no, it really happens. Maybe I was using the wrong (right?) kind of onions before.

Anyway, a ton of onions.



Lots. Then I have to add some garlic, and OMG, Squeeze Garlic.



I freaked out when I saw this in the store. How is it possible that no one had ever thought of this before? Brilliant.

In the background you may notice my lovely knife holder called "The Ex", a present from my friend Michelle.

Anyway, after many attempts on my own, I did a little bit of research, and ultimately sought the wisdom of someone experiencing the same predicament that I was suffering through, Gary's boss's wife Kelly. She actually has had training as a chef, although I think most of it has been as a pastry chef, but still, she should be better than I am at identifying mysterious spices. She tried to imitate Prince's Shawarma recipe also, and posted her efforts on her cooking blog called Evil Shenanigans. She did a recipe with Beef Shawarma Meatballs, and I wanted to do it with chicken, but I figured the spices would be about the same. I went to the store this weekend and bought Allspice, Cardamon, and ground Coriander. I had been using curry and paprika before, and saw no reason to stop, so my dish is super-spiced.



I threw a little bit of curry powder in with the onion, chili, and garlic, stirred it around, and threw the diced chicken in (1 small breast). I added the other spices to the mixture, and threw the tomatoes on top. Oh, right, yes, I chopped up two small tomatoes to cook with it. I let it simmer a little while.



I had cooked brown rice and lentils earlier and set them aside; my sister showed me a great trick for cooking them at the same time. If you use minute rice (brown rice in my case), you can throw the lentils in with the rice; they take the same amount of time to cook. After the mixture had simmered for awhile, I mixed in the brown rice and lentils and stirred the whole thing around. I had used about two servings of each so that I would end up with two servings of the shawarma mixture at the end.



Nearly everything I make is stuffed into tupperware so I can bring it to work the next day, but if you're serving this at home you can (and probably should) put the rice on the side. I like to eat this with a small side of hummus (sans the oil, for the sake of calories), which is how they serve it at Prince.

For those of you who are more structured, the ones who like lists, here are the
Ingredients:
1 Chicken Breast, diced
1 Onion
1 Serrano Chile
2 Tomatoes (small)
2 Cups Brown Rice
1/2 Cup Lentils
1/2 Teaspoon Allspice
1/2 Teaspoon Cardamom
1/4 Teaspoon Coriander
1 Teaspoon Paprika
1 Teaspoon Curry Powder

I'm too tired to calculate the calories for you right now, but I may come back and update this later.