Kebab sandwich symbol of street cuisine 

The street, with its countless kiosks and street carts, is one of the favorite places for Turks to have a quick snack at any time of the day. You will find the simplest things, from golden bread bracelets flavoured with sesame seeds (simit) to grilled or boiled corn on the cob and just sprinkled with fine salt.

Walking along the banks of the Bosphorus you can enjoy mussel skewers in batter (midye tavasi), fried on the spot in aluminum tanks and served with a sauce of yogurt, garlic and pine nuts, or extra large stuffed mussels stuffed with rice pilaf (midye dolmasi) but also a plate of grilled tripe (kokorec). Of all the walking food specialties, however, one in particular has established itself globally and has become the symbol of Turkish street food on its own: the döner kebab.

The term kebab is a word of Persian origin, in fact it derives from "kabab" which in the Farsi language means "grilled" or "roasted". The term appears for the first time in an ancient healthy cooking text of the Fertile Crescent, the Kitab al Tabeekh published in the tenth century in Baghdad by a physician of the time: Ibn Sayyar al Warraq.

In its original version, the recipe for kabab khalis was simply prepared with strips of sautéed meat browned on a hot plate, using the melted fat of the fattest parts of the animal, such as the tail of the mutton, as a condiment. To arrive at the Ottoman Turkish version of what we now commonly call döner kebab (döner in Turkish means "rotating"), therefore "rotating roast", we will have to wait many centuries.

From the travel stories of explorers and travelers in Asia Minor, written in the eighteenth century, we know of the existence of an ancestor of this specialty: the oltu kebab, originally from the town of the same name in the province of Erzurum, in northeastern Turkey. The cooking of large pieces of grilled meat, however, still took place using long metal skewers positioned horizontally on the burning embers, as the nomadic populations of Central Asia used to do since ancient times, when they cooked the meat of their prey by skewering it in the long swords that acted as skewers, after having cut it and flavored it with yogurt and aromatic herbs.

The idea of modifying the kebab cooking technique, reversing the axis of rotation vertically, took place around the nineteenth century in the Turkish city of Bursa. It was a real revolution, since in this way the humours that come out of the roasted meats are not dispersed on the embers, but collected, at the foot of the skewer, to flavor the scraps of meat already browned or to keep the spit soft during cooking, pouring them on top of the döner kebab.

The version of kebab based on scraps of roasted meat served in sandwiches of various makes, stuffed with mixed salad and sauces, which we find today in Italy and the rest of Europe, is a relatively recent recipe; It was popularized towards the end of the sixties, in Germany, in the Berlin district of Kreuzeberg, by Turkish immigrants, as a reworking of their traditional dish, in an attempt to meet the favor of the German consumer. From the heart of multi-ethnic Germany, the path of penetration of this specialty into the rest of Europe lasted about thirty years but has conquered every town and every neighborhood, in London as in Marseille and for some time also in Italy, thanks to the growing presence of migrants of Middle Eastern and Turkish Balkan origin.

In Turkey, which is the undisputed homeland of the rotating kebab, there are many variations of this specialty; Let's list the main ones.

- Iskender kebap, notor even as bursa or yogurtlu kebap, by far the most prized and sought-after, originally from the city of Bursa where its inventor, Iskender Efendi, developed the recipe in the nineteenth century, patenting it and transforming it into the corporate brand of his family kebab shop, still open today in Bursa. Made from grilled lamb, less fatty than the classic döner, finely sliced on pita bread and flavored with yogurt, tomato sauce and melted butter.

- Adana kebabi, a specialty of the city of Adana in southeastern Turkey, already described by Marco Polo in his travel reports. These are flat skewers about a meter long on which a layer of minced lamb meat (tartare) is spread, skillfully squeezed in the fist of the hand, mixed with fat in the proportion of 5 to 1 and red chilli powder, grilled on a bed of charcoal in front of the public in the traditional ocakbasi. Adana kebap is served on flatbread (pite, lavash or berber), with onion salad and a red spice with a citrus flavor (sumac), grilled vegetables (tomatoes, peppers), lemon and aromatic herbs (mint, parsley) and is accompanied by some traditional drinks: liquid yogurt (ayran), beetroot juice (salgam) or anise distillate (raki). Some Anatolian specialties, already influenced by Syrian cuisine, involve the addition of chopped pistachios (fistik kebap) or eggplant slices (patlicanli kebap) to meat.

Kofte kebap or Shish kòfte (a term of Persian origin), very popular in Turkey and Middle Eastern countries, is made with minced lamb, flavored with aromatic herbs (parsley and mint) and spices, preferably served with boiled rice dishes and mixed salads.

The easiest way to enjoy grilled meats is to cook them in the form of Sis or Shish kebab (in Persian); small pieces of meat strung along metal skewers, possibly alternating with mixed vegetables (aubergines, onions, peppers, mushrooms), according to a tradition widespread in many Mediterranean countries: brochettes (France and Maghreb), cevapi (former Yugoslavia), souvlaki (Greece), chelou kabab (in Iran).

Under Ottoman rule, döner kebab spread to other areas of the Mediterranean and the Far East (India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan), changing its name and adapting to the tastes of the local populations; we find it in Greece under the name of gyros and made with pork, and from Syria to Tunisia, passing through Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt with the name of shawarma.

In addition to the name, the accompanying sauces also change: yogurt becomes tzatziki and tahini sauce in Greece, sesame butter sauce in the Middle East, while in the now globalized and westernized version, it is more frequently served with mayonnaise, ketchup and fries, if not even scattered in strips... on pizza!