The lady’s for turning
You may not have a rotating shawarma grill at home, but you can recreate the taste
There was great excitement when my friend Mahmoud installed a shawarma “stall” outside his chalet in Khiran, a Kuwaiti seaside retreat near the Saudi border. The shawarma is not normally the preserve of home cooking, but one of the most typical street foods around the eastern Mediterranean and, increasingly, around the world. A very large, fat “kebab” – once made only with lamb, but now also with chicken – is fixed in front of a vertical grill and left to rotate over a moderate heat for two to three hours until the meat is cooked through.
Mahmoud had prepared for his venture by sending his cook, Abdullah, to a Lebanese master so he could learn how to prepare the shawarma and then make the sandwiches – the meat is wrapped in a double layer of pita bread together with fresh herbs, salad vegetables and pickles; the lamb is drizzled with tahini and the chicken with a garlic sauce. In Syria, many shawarma vendors wrap the finished sandwich in a layer of markouk (paper-thin bread cooked over a saj) and then toast it for extra crunch.
In Turkey, where shawarma is called döner kebap, the meat can be lamb or beef and it is sliced or minced. The word shawarma comes from the Turkish çevime, meaning “turning”.
I often toy with having a mini shawarma in my kitchen, but it is neither very practical nor very attractive. Instead, I slice lamb meat from the shoulder into thin, narrow strips, marinate it overnight in shawarma spices and seasoning, then quickly sauté the meat in a hot frying pan before making the sandwich. Not as exciting as Abdullah’s, but excellent nevertheless.
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