Souvlaki – Greek Kebab

Pork shoulder or a chop like this one works because it has enough fat and connective tissue to survive quick, hot cooking without drying into cardboard — a lean loin would seize up in the same pan. If you're swapping in chicken thigh (also traditional in Greece, cheaper than pork in some places), treat it the same way: skin removed, cut small, same marinade time. Chicken breast is the one cut to avoid here; it has no fat reserve to protect it from a hot pan.

The marinade itself is just acid, oil, salt, and two herbs doing three separate jobs. Lemon juice is the acid that starts loosening muscle fibre — not "cooking" the meat as ceviche myths would have you believe, just softening it at the surface. Olive oil carries the dried herbs' flavour into the meat and stops the lemon drying it out. Oregano and mint are the Greek signature; if you're out of dried mint, use more oregano rather than fresh mint, because fresh herbs burn and turn bitter in a screaming-hot pan, while dried ones are already past that stage. Any oil with no smell of its own will do the carrying job — a flavourless vegetable oil at a pinch — but olive oil is doing double duty here as both marinade and frying fat, so don't swap it out for frying and keep it for the marinade only; that's a false economy.

On the dough: wholemeal flour alongside plain isn't nostalgia, it's structure. Wholemeal brings bran, which is sharp enough to tear gluten strands if it's the only flour you use — that's why it's cut with plain flour rather than used alone. Water and a short knead build just enough gluten to roll thin without tearing; the half-hour rest lets that gluten relax so it doesn't spring back fighting you with the rolling pin. Rolling in oil instead of flour matters for one plain reason: flour on the surface would scorch in the dry pan before the dough underneath has cooked, leaving black specks and a raw centre. Oil doesn't scorch at the same temperature, and it won't toughen the dough the way a floured surface can.

Cooking the flatbread is a dry pan, hot enough that a drop of water sizzles off instantly — too cool and the dough stiffens before it browns, drying into a cracker instead of staying soft. You're looking for small brown blisters and a bread that still bends in your hand once off the heat. Stack them under a tea towel as they come off the pan; the steam they trade with each other is what keeps the whole batch pliable instead of letting the first one go leathery while you cook the ninth.

The yoghurt: Greek-style at 10% fat isn't a style choice, it's a structural one — it's already been strained of whey, so it holds its shape around the cucumber instead of running off the bread. A lower-fat yoghurt will work if you strain it yourself through a sieve lined with kitchen roll for an hour first; skip that and you're back to the same water problem the cucumber causes.

This feeds four as a proper meal — allow two or three wraps a head, more if people are hungry and you've made the full ten flatbreads. The patience here isn't dramatic: it's the marinating hours you can't see and shouldn't rush, and the fifteen minutes the cucumber needs to give up its water. Neither step looks like cooking. Both are the reason the dish holds together when you finally roll it.