Middle East Kebabs

Kebab (kabab or kabob) means ‘to grill or broil’ in most of the languages in which it appears. Shish (Turkish and Middle Eastern) or sikh or seekh (Indian) means ‘skewer’. So that any food skewered and grilled is a shish or sikh kebab. In Britain, kebab commonly means skewered bits of meat, or meat and vegetables grilled over charcoal, or under a gas or electric grill.

On a recent trip to Morocco, I was fascinated by the little stalls in the streets, where cooks grilled small brochettes of meat – tiny cubes of beef, lamb or liver – over portable charcoal braziers in the open market-places. The tantalising aroma of these grilled meats with their pungent sauces and spices made my mouth water in every city I visited. The famous sate of Java is a similar version of this dish. Made of beef, pork, lamb or chicken, the sate consists of nothing but meat, marinated in soy sauce and spices, grilled on thin skewers of bamboo.