The desire for a proper kebab

I have not been to Greece for a long time - since 1991 to be exact. I spent a few weeks bludging around Corfu and the mainland on my way to Turkey, and it was a pretty pleasant experience. I remember the place being pretty ramshackle - the EU had not turned on the funding tap, and everyone was poor and dusty. Quite a few made a living as kebab vendors by the side of the road, and I have not had a good kebab since then. They might have only had half a 44 gallon drum and a wood fire to work with, but it was enough to do the business when it comes to kebabs.

Around halfway though my visit, I got to see where the kebab meat came from. I blundered into an open air market in a place long forgotten, and everything was done outdoors - including butchering the cows. I distinctly remember seeing a cows head sitting on a wooden chopping block, covered in a thick black layer of flies. Unidentifiable lumps of cow were sitting around in various states of dismemberment, also covered in flies. I was reminded of that sight years later when watching "Three Kings", in the scene where the guys stop to look at a cow, and the cow stands on a landmine or cluster bomb and is blown to bits.

That's how the Greeks produced kebabs. The fillet steak was unknown to them. They just chopped everything up into little chunks, stuck the bits onto wooden sticks and grilled them over hot coals. It was great.

The idea that we have over here that a kebab is created by sticking 100 kilos of unidentifiable beef onto a big metal skewer, then slowly rotating it in front of electric elements, and then slicing of thin slivers of shoe leather is insane. It is nothing like a proper kebab.

I revisited Greece in my mind tonight by cooking some kebabs on the BBQ, then serving them up on homemade flat bread. The bread was supposed to have been baked in the oven, but our stupid oven won't get hot enough, so I did the bread on the BBQ too (with the lid down).

It was great.

The best thing is that the kebabs hardly dripped. Because I made "fluffy" flatbread, and we tore it open and "unzipped" it before adding the meat etc, the fluffy insides of the bread absorbed all the juice and prevented leaks. When you get a kebab from a kebab shop, they use the same sort of bread, but they never open it up. Your meat and stuff is therefore sitting on a slick surface, which is the outside crust. That's why you always end up with kebab juice running down to your elbows.

I am going to be doing a lot more of these over summer.