Tiny Chicken Legs

Last evening, the wife suggested that we eat dinner downtown at Opa Taverna. We enjoyed the place; a nice, kind of long and narrow restaurant with a three-man band playing traditional Greek music on guitars and bouzoukis; I think that's what they are called. It was the first time we had been there. Janet mentioned that she had been wanting to eat there for some time now. Better late than never, I said, and then I apologized.

So we ordered two Amber Ales, brewed less than a mile away at Natty Greene's, and I had my eye on a bowl of cannellini-bean-and-vegetable soup du jour. Good soup, despite being served lukewarm. With a little more heat, freshly-cracked pepper and a bit of Parm-Regg, it would have been just right. So the next time I make soup, I will try a version of it using my own suggestions.

I knew I wanted gyro meat, so I ordered the souvalki platter. It came with a bit of rice and a vegetable medley of squash, green beans, and those wee, tiny carrots, a bit of rice, and tzatziki sauce. The meat was excellent. Flavorfully cooked on a rotisserie, its hand-hewn peels held an appealing crispness. I did not eat my piece of bread, though it looked good.

Janet ordered a lamb dish called Youvetsi, served with mashed potatoes and that same vegetable medley. I tried the meat, and the sauce was so familiar to me, a kind of red sauce with a capsicum flavor, just like the sauce that my grandmother cooked her stuffed peppers in. Succulent meat. Delicious sauce that goes well with gyro, also. I am generally not a fan of lamb, or perhaps I have just been deluding myself that I am not a fan of lamb. Anyway, dinner was good, it was fresh, the ingredients were good, and we will surely go there another time, preferably when I am eating bread again.

I knew what I wanted to eat for my breakfast this morning, and when I woke, I dumped a container of ratatouille into the little skillet and heated it. Then I added two beaten eggs, more Salt and Pepper, and I ate Ratty Eggs for breakfast. I think I also put a little bit of cheese on the top, but it was not necessary.

But the real treat came later in the afternoon in the form of small chicken legs that I baked for a while and then I broiled for a while to get that skin so nice and crisply browned. To me, few things are more unappealing than undercooked chicken skin. Since I had cilantro that needed to be used, I also made more chimichurri sauce. It was as good this time as last, perhaps better, since I added a green onion to the mix. So after the legs baked, I spread a small amount of chimichurri on them, and it was good to me. I also had some tiny chicken legs with hot sauce, which is truly my favorite way to eat tiny chicken legs. And I ate chicken meat and celebrated the Mountaineers overtime win versus Villanova.