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Grilled Turkey Breast
This is one of my favorite dishes from Turkey.
Here is a funny story behind this. A few years ago I did not speak English at all, even less than 10 years ago. We went to Turkey and all the food was outstanding, but especially I loved some grilled meat which was called “Turkey” (I thought that was a name of the country or maybe some national Turkey dish). I had absolutely no idea what it was, but I fell in love with it. Every time they would serve it, I would be the 1st in line to get it. In Lithuania, where I come from, not sure now, but 20 years ago turkey (the meat) was not popular. We would get it only around Christmas or so and I was not familiar with this meat. It took me 10 years, yes, 10 years to figure it out what that meat was! Hahahaha. When I saw somewhere a translation from English and they talked about turkey (a bird). Then I connected the ends and made my very own version of it as close as possible to the memories what grilled turkey I had in Turkey (damn it! can English native speaking come up with more words, so it would not be so confusing for some people? Haha)
Well.. this is what I came up with.
Ingredients
1500 g or 3 lbs. and 14 oz. of turkey breast sliced in medallions
1.5 tbsp. of sea salt
1 tbsp. of black pepper
1 tbsp. of garlic powder
1/2 tbsp. of chili flakes
1 tbsp. of dried oregano or 2 tbsp. of fresh
1/2 tbsp. of ground cardamom
1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil
A few springs of lemon thyme, finely chopped leaves (I think this one was the most dominating in their dish)
A few springs of rosemary, finely chopped leaves
A few springs of sage, finely chopped leaves
2 medium lemons (zest and juice)
5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Let’s make it
- Mix all the marinate ingredients together, rub into the meat. Cover with a plastic wrap and refrigerate ~2 hours.
- Grill on preheated to 450-500 F grill until meat thermometer reaches 165 F.
- Serve with vegetable salad or cut it and put in a wrap wit pita bread, hummus or garlic sauce, tomatoes, red onions and lettuce.
- Enjoy!