Spits, skewers and kebabs
by Nick Baines | 18 January 2012 | 
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Nick Baines loves a good kebab and takes a wider look at cooking meat on skewers
The kebab has cemented itself into the British high-street and today you’re as likely to find a kebab house on your street corner as you are a chip shop, newsagent or local boozer. But despite its omnipresence, the kebab is a guilty pleasure. It provides sustenance to hungry drinkers, a beer sponge readily available when the pubs close. It has become closely affiliated with the inebriated because at eleven-thirty at night, it’s often the only food option available. But beyond the doner, there’s a whole myriad of skewer specialties varying from the backyard barbecue skewer to a juicy rotisserie chicken.
A world of skewers
The implementation of skewers obviously followed shortly after man’s greatest discovery, cooking with fire. Every nation in the world has mastered this art in some form or another. In Japan, small skewers of chicken meat and offal are grilled over coals and known as yakitori.
Chicken satay, a dish I am sure readers are familiar with, originates from Indonesia and is ubiquitous across south east Asia. In the dusty streets of Vietnam you’re likely to see meat skewered with sticks of lemon grass, which impart their own flavour throughout the cooking process. Turkey is where our trusted friend, the doner kebab originates. Lamb is mixed with herbs and spices before being packed onto a spit and roasted over fire. Cooking the doner on a vertical axis is not only an economical use of space, but the rendered juices run down the outside of the doner, basting the meat during the descent.
Spits and skewers in Britain
Skewers and spits have long been used in Britain too. In Colin Spencer’s British Food he describes a manor kitchen in Anglo-Saxon times. “As with the peasant household, the implements at a manor kitchen would have been a large cauldron and tripod, but they would have a much used spit turned by hand and able to hold the occasional large carcass or a string of smaller ones. There were also smaller spits for small birds.” These smaller spits would be used to cook all manner of scraps and off cuts. Even now, the coils of a Cumberland sausage are often held in place by two skewers, which remain in place whilst grilled or barbecued. Perhaps our finest use of skewers is their fundamental use in hog roasts. Painted with honey and basted in cider it’s one of life’s greatest gifts and the virtues of this form of cooking speak for themselves.
Over the camp fire
From lancing a banger on the end of a metal tent peg and dangling it in the flames, to roasting marshmallows on the fringe of a garden bonfire, using a stick to cook your food comes natural to us. “It’s instinctive. See a fire. Find a stick. Cook something on that. I remember field mushrooms, small fresh fish and thick slices of pineapple,” says Glynn Christian, author of Real Flavours, voted world’s best guide to deli and specialty foods. “But best ever is proper toast, sliced thickly, first well warmed through a little distance from the fire and then browned closer. These days I’d scrape it with garlic, before and after; butter or olive oil.”
Do you appreciate a decent doner or are you all about the hog roast? What are your favourite or most memorable skewer cooked foods?
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Comments
by jedi44 | on 19 January 2012
I love most doners but the one I remember best didn't come from a British after-hours kerry-oot or even from a restaurant in Turkey. We arrived on our bikes in a small town in France, on a Sunday. Typically, there was only one small "bistro" open, which was run by a Turkish family, most of whom seemed to be congregated outside on the only tables. We went in, since we were desparate, and had the biggest surprise of our cullinary lives. Rather than be given a menu, we were simply told to sit down and wait. Two beers arrived, often not the case in Moslem places, which we sipped for a while. Eventually plates arrived, full to the brim with curly doner pieces. These were not the usual soft greasy strips. They were partly moist but beautifully offset by other strips that were deliciously crispy. Rather than being served with a soggy salad and chips or pitta, there was also a heap of rice in a fiery sauce. More beer definitely required. We've searched for doner served in a similar crispy fashion ever since, to no avail. Maybe it's because it's usually cooked and served so fast that the surface doesn't get cooked as much as it was in that quiet little bistro.
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