"kebab" news and stories

I've never been the type to insist that no two foods on my plate touch each other. Whether it's pancake syrup leaking onto the bacon or cornbread crumbs in my turnip greens, I love for the mingling of ingredients to continue even after the cooking ends. Yet all my life, I ate each piece on a kebab separately. I just didn't know better--until last summer.

At a tiny, unassuming restaurant called Çiya Kebap near the Asian banks of Istanbul, a knowing waiter, kindly sensing our ignorance, took a few moments to show my mother and me how a kebab ought to be eaten. He'd just set before us a tantalizing skewer of ground lamb, charred eggplant and red onion, nearly liquid tomato, and sweet-hot chili--but in less than a minute, he mashed everything together so thoroughly that the components were hardly recognizable. Then he sprinkled a spice blend called baharat over all of it and instructed us (nonverbally, since we couldn't speak the same language) to mop up portions of the mash with the paper-thin flatbread stacked alongside.

Turns out Çiya Kebap, along with two other Çiya restaurants with different menus located just steps away, is world famous. If I'd eaten my kebab in my usual manner, I wouldn't have any clue what the fuss was all about. Instead, I experienced some of the most revelatory mouthfuls in recent memory. The splendor of the combined flavors would be impossible to exaggerate, even with words like "symphony" and "revelation."

Of course, a kebab anywhere, not just in Istanbul, would benefit from such intervention. The key is to glob everything together. Don't be too dainty about it, and don't worry about appearances. Just enjoy the big sloppy mess, and spread the word.

I hate the cold, so I have a hard time seeing why anyone would want to move to the island of Spitsbergen, about 300 miles from the northern tip of Norway. However, that is exactly what Kazem Ariaiwand did, and he had a very good reason for making the move.

Mr. Ariaiwand is an Iranian who had been seeking asylum in Norway. His family had been accepted, however, he was denied. As it turns out, Spitsbergen, in the Svalbard archipelago, doesn't require pesky paperwork or residency status to live there. So Mr. Ariaiwand moved there as a temporary solution and promptly opened his kebab shop. It's become so popular that it has challenged traditional foods, like whale meat and seal meat, for superiority.

I can understand this man's motives, and I certainly see why a kebab shop would be so popular in the arctic circle. I've never had the pleasure of seal or whale meat, but it seems like a kebab would win me over pretty quickly!

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You wouldn't necessarily think that a marine biologist would be likely to write a cookbook, but you would be wrong when that marine biologist is Anand Prakash. Prakash spent 20 years traveling the globe, eating excellent kabobs and decided to pass along the kebab recipes and history of their development in his book The World of Kebabs. It features over 100 recipes for different types of kebabs from different countries and, since just about anything than be stuck on a skewer, the variety is tremendous. After 20-some years, there is little doubt that Prakash could have included even more combinations, but these are some of his best. Recipes cover every part of the world, including Chicken Tikka Kebabs from India, Pork Souvlaki from Greece and Mangrove Oyster Kebabs from Trinidad.

There are also tips about preparing the meat/veggies and how to grill a kebab, since the biggest challenge is making sure all the components for your meal are done at the same time. A book like this one is a good way to make your regular grilling a little bit more interesting, expanding your options from chicken breasts and steaks to something a little different.

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The Pot-de-Feu grill is eco-friendly and foodie-friendly - that's what we like to see in our various cooking gadgets/equipment whenever possible. The grills, weighing in at only 6.5-lbs and 7x12-in., are hand-crafted from used up 20-lb propane tanks and each one features a unique flame design. All exterior surfaces of the heavy steel are painted with black, high heat paint, while the insides are unpainted. Charcoal is the best material for grilling with a Pot-de-Feu and a cooking grate is included with each one. Smallish foods like kebabs, grilled fruits for dessert or simply meals for a small group of people are the best things to cook on these and, if you set a paving stone or other protective material under the grill, it can be set on a tabletop. Be careful, though: the grill itself gets very hot during cooking!

Check out a picture of the grill in action after the jump.

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Many Asian restaurant owners in the UK are fearful that they may no longer be able to staff their kitchens with workers from their homelands, according to a recent article in The Times. Pending restrictions from the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality bill would force the owners of Chinese and Indian takeaway (takeout to us Americans) restaurants to employ workers from eastern Europe over workers of their own nationalities. Troubled restaurant owners have cited language barriers and other cultural differences as the main obstacles in employing non-Asian cooks, claiming that a cultural background is necessary to prepare authentic food. The proposed bill would allow citizenship to some skilled workers of non-European origin, but many unskilled workers would be provided little in the way of rights to settle in the UK.