I was asked to write a longer piece for Matt at CKBK, which I completed and submitted to him over the holiday period. I’ve not yet had feedback, so <cross fingers emoji> 🤞 that it gets his seal of approval soon. Assuming it does and once live, I’ll post a link on the site.
Back in the 1970s, there was a bubble-gum, pop band called 10CC, who were the UK home-grown equivalent of the inhabitants of the Tin Pan Alley adjacent, Brill Building team, in the US. They produced some singles that successfully got caught in the ear, “Donna” being their first and “I’m Not In Love” coming later on, being their most successful, which latter wound up as the bane of the school and disco “last dance” choice. It was always this one played as the lights went up. I hated it then and I hate it to this day.
Anyway, I wrote döner and heard “Donna” in my head. So sue me, for including this ear-worm. At least I’ve not put the other fucking one on…
Back to the reason for this piece then…
The CKBK app has a section about Consuming Passions — which is where mine is slated to appear — so in this, my paean to pigs and pork, and as part of a trail of recipes and foods that helped define my life, I’d talked about the growth of fast-food takeouts that slowly (the obvious earlier fish and chips and pie and mash ones aside) came to define the English High Street after the 1960s, as new cultures, countries and cooks came over to stay and work, and found that the easiest way to make a living was to open a small restaurant, in a back-street or away from the main-drag — at least at the beginning — and there to cook, firstly for their fellow citizens, then for the English (and Welsh, Irish and Scots). The Turkish lads came slightly later than the first regions I mention below but they, like their forerunners, soon became staples of the High Street, there to capture the homeward bound school kids, the late night revellers and the early starting workers. Any and all tastes from all over the world are now ours to order at the drop of a hat (or a tap on an app). One of the very few ‘benefits’ of late-stage capitalism and globalisation that I’m prepared to say is A Very Good Thing™.
It’s obvious that there aren’t many really new ways of presenting your food coming along now; all the obvious, sensible, well-tested ones, skewers, on top of rice, in a stew, both in a bowl or in a bread ‘wrapping’ have all long been perfected and we can (and should) safely ignore — indeed burn down and salt the very earth underneath the people who thought of them — devices such as eating off a piece of slate, chips brought to you in anything that isn’t newspaper and small sharing plates “for the whole table” (I don’t want to share anything on my plate, with anyone, so kindly fuck off!) being the most obvious of these horrors that spring to mind.
I found this photo in the Wiki entry for doner kebab. It’s claimed to be the earliest known shot of the prototype, ur-doner with meat cooked on a world-shattering new invention — the vertical rotisserie — taken in 1855 by a James Robertson somewhere inside the Ottoman Empire.
I guess that apart from the lack of a roof and walls and the sand floor underfoot, this is pretty much exactly how any kebab shop — anywhere in the world — showcases their food for the paying customer.
I love a really good kebab. That arrangement of hot, spiced, possibly mixed meats, thinly sliced tomatoes, some diced cucumber, maybe a few finely julienned peppers, a bed of crisp lettuce, hot, spicy sauce and possibly some house-mayonnaise, all wrapped inside a soft, pillowy, charred pita flat-bread is both a great, great, great dish and empirical proof that this method of delivery to the mouth is about as genius as it gets.
Mind you I have to confess to a liking for bad kebabs as well, the same basic ingredients but ones where you’re not completely convinced that the meat isn’t simply a “pensioner’s leg”, hacked off some unfortunate who’d stupidly wandered down some dank, dark alley, that’s then been held at botulism encouraging levels of warmth for the entire day,served dripping in fat and where half of the ‘package’ drops out of the soaked wrapping paper, onto your shoes or the pavement, as you stagger your way home, trying all the while to cram it into your gob or you find — when you wake in the morning — large remnants, glued hard, as though with cement, to the side of your face, where you’d collapsed in a drunken heap onto your pillow.
Yup, love those ones as well. This shot is one of the former.
The recipe I mentioned above, which uses pork shoulder to magical effect, is available here via CKBK. You’ll need to take advantage of the 14-day trial to read it. Go on, you know it makes sense.