Morning:
8°c
I'm not in the least bit surprised to learn that the humble kebab can provide someone with their entire day's necessary calorific intake.
After all, we've all been there: the late night stop at the aquarium of a takeaway; the muttered affirmatives as we're asked "salad?" and "hot sauce?"- then, in the shameful privacy of our own home, comes the papery divestment.
On the outside it may merely resemble an adipose pitta bread, but once we bite into it, the stuff comes tumbling out: the car-tyre-strips of meat, the gory sauce, the thick roundels of cucumber, and entire hayricks of coleslaw. How - we ask ourselves as we gag on the stuff - can there be that much coleslaw in the world, let alone in this single doner kebab?
The doner kebab has become a staple of the London scene, so much so that if you drive one of the great arterial roads of the metropolis - say from my gaff in Stockwell down to Croydon - the stylised doners on the takeaways' signs have the quality of a flicker book, as one hefty block of meat is rapidly succeeded by the next.
Yet this is primarily a convenience food, much munched by busy Londoners, because it takes no time at all to slice the block and stuff the bread. Even asking for a shish kebab - cubes of marinated chicken, lamb or beef - slows us down too much, yet, in my experience, a shish can be a gastronomic treat even in the wilds of Sanderstead. It's freshly grilled, the ingredients are simple - and unlike junk food, they aren't oozing additives.
Going upmarket still more, a kebab roll at Maroush - either in Beauchamp Place or on Edgware Road - is as near to the authentic Eastern Mediterranean experience as you can get in central London. I make a point of stopping in there at least every month or so, and whether shawarma (the same as doner), shish, or kofta (balls of compressed mince meat), once I have the tightly-wrapped flatbread snack in my little hand it's hot - and I'm toasty.
Indeed, I have a confession to make: virtually all I ever eat are kebabs. Long lamb kofta kebabs are what I order from my favourite Indian takeaway, Hot Stuff in Vauxhall, and I eat flat ones when I sit down at the Indian Club restaurant in the Aldwych. If I eat Thai or Chinese I invariably have some satay - and after all, what's that, except a slightly more irenic form of the kebab?
I've no idea if my being espaliered in this fashion on an almost daily basis is what's responsible for my trim form and excellent health - but it must all add into the mix. I dare say that when I die and go to hell, I'll appreciate the irony as Satan threads me on to his pitchfork and stokes up the brimstone. I wonder if I'll have the sangfroid to cry out: "Hold the hot sauce! And the coleslaw!"
Reader views (4)
I make my own...... this takes 5 minutes:
slice a chicken breast / turkey breast/ small beef piece into thin slices while you heat a pan, then stir fry, add salt and some sauce of your choice ( When I'm really depressed, I add cream......)
While the meat is frying, slice some salad and cucumbers and tomaotes or only one of those.
Put into a pita bread or a Piadina, (sprinkle cheese on top), and to mimic the "mush factor" put into micorwave for 1 minute.
This is the easy version. For gourmet nights I go off to a lebanese shop and buy some serious spices and stuff....
This is just as delicious, and the calories are apporx 500 per kebab.
- Juma, london, uk
Will Self's prose always has me in stitches - he always sounds as if he has watched too many Ealing films of the 1960s. "Gaff" indeed - how very quaint!
- Suzannah, London UK
The health police seldom point out the benefits of any food they choose to chastise. At least with a kebab you get a portion of vegetables and they are raw, including cabbage with all its cancer fighting properties as well as onions and garlic with their cardiac boosting allicin. So yes it can be high in salt but a Pret all-day breakfast sandwich also contains vast quantities of salt and fat but with no vegetables. If you go for the shish instead of the doner it is actually relatively nutritious and could be the only vegetables some of the drinking classes ever eat!
- Lyndon Gee, Westminster
This article made me pine for London - Oh how i yearn for a badly split pitta pocket filled with minced lamb parts - don't give me the meat from the pan at the side you prepared earlier - i want it stripped before my beery eyes. And please fold the last bit of paper into kebab itself so that when I get home it all tumbles onto the carpet - but I shall eat every glorious bit - twisted pile and all. Fond memories.
- Mr Pastry, Brisbane Australia
