Shish Taouk - Lebanese Grilled Garlic Chicken Skewers

I've been on a chicken grilling kick this week. I bought a HUGE amount of chicken & other meats directly from a farm a few months ago and it's been so easy to just grab meat out of the chest freezer every time I want to cook.
This recipe makes amazing grilled chicken kababs that I could eat on it's own without any embellishments. But the sides do take it over the top, so I recommend you try them. My toum (Lebanese garlic sauce, kind of like aioli) actually broke when I made it (sigh), so I did some research and realized the recipe I followed had a puny amount of garlic that wasn't going to let the oil bind to it. All other recipes I saw online had a huge amount of garlic that I corrected & listed below in the recipe.

Once I'm over my failure, maybe I'll try making the sauce again. But for the adventurous out there, I didn't want to hold back the toum recipe....so here it is with corrections that should result in a creamy white fluffy toum sauce. But take heart even if your toum does not come out because it can still be used as a marinade. Also, garlicky greek yogurt sauce makes an EXCELLENT substitute for toum as a spread. I included a quick recipe for the garlicky greek yogurt in case your toum breaks as well :)

Recipe adapted from Bon Appetit
Makes 4 servings of chicken (with lots of toum leftover)

Ingredients:
Toum
1/2 cup garlic cloves
2 large egg whites
4 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp sea salt
1.5 cups olive oil

Chicken
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp tomato paste
1/4 cup toum (or 6 garlic cloves minced, along with 2 tbsp olive oil)
1 tsp sea salt
1 tbsp ground coriander
1.25 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into 2 inch chunks
4-5 pitas, warmed
toum (OR 1 cup greek yogurt mixed with 1 tsp salt and 1 garlic clove for sauce if toum doesn't work out)
sliced cucumbers
tender cilantro sprigs
mint leaves

Procedure:
For the toum, blend the garlic with the egg whites, lemon juice and sea salt in a food processor until super creamy to an almost fluffy white. This is key! Start adding olive oil in a very slow drizzle until it starts to emulsify and finish adding the olive oil in a slow drizzle. You can keep the toum in the fridge for a week. It's excellent as a grilling meat marinade.

In a medium bowl, mix together lemon juice, tomato paste, toum, sea salt and ground coriander. Add the chicken pieces and mix to coat well. Let marinate for at least 3 hours up to overnight in the fridge ( I did 3 hours). Bring the chicken out of the fridge an hour to two hours before grilling. Skewer the chicken on 5 medium skewers. Preheat the grill on high for 10 minutes and grill on medium heat for 8 minutes, turning halfway. Serve the kababs with warmed pita bread, extra toum (or greek yogurt sauce), sliced cucumbers, cilantro and mint. I made it like a taco as well filled pita pockets and both were good ways to eat this.