Cafe 220

Food historians generally attribute the origin of kebabs to ancient Middle Eastern cooks. In a land where fuel was scarce, this was a very efficient way to cook meat. Small pieces of meat (smaller the cut, faster they cook) threaded on skewers would have required very little fire. The recipes and combinations are endless.

"Kebab. A dish consisting basically of small pieces of meat threaded on to skewers and grilled or roasted. It originated in Turkey and eventually spread to the Balkans and the Middle East. The name is a shortened form of the Tukish sis kebab, sis meaning skewer and kebab meaning roast meat."---Larousse Gastronomique, completely revised and updated [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 646)

"Sis Kebabi...It is said that shish bebab was born over the open-field fires of medieval Turkic soldiers, who used their swords to grill meat. Given the obvious simplicity of spit-roasting meat over a fire, I suspect its genesis is earlier. There is iconographical evidence of Byzantine Greeks cooking shish kebabs. But surely the descriptions for skewering strips of meat for broiling in Homer's Odyssey must count for an early shish kebab."---A Mediterranean Feast, Clifford A. Wright [William Morrow:New York] 1999 (p. 333)