13 April Saturday

Another cold, wet, windy Saturday here in San Francisco. A great time for research. That’s right, friends we’re picking up where we left off in Kebabville. First, a gentle off-topic reminder. Always pull the book off the shelf by its sides, not down from the top of the spine. I remember this because several years ago I bought a book called the Turkish Cookbook. It is a thick red hardcover cookbook loaded with items I’m not likely to serve to my guests, like ram’s testicles and whole sheep’s head. It’s not that I’m not up for an adventure, it’s the leftovers I fear most. I imagine everyone would take a polite little nibble of ram’s nut on a skewer, and I’d be the one eating them for breakfast lunch and dinner for the next four days.

At any rate, I had this book taking up space on the shelf, half or whole knowing that I would not be cooking from it ever. Plus, one day, when I went to peruse it, I pulled the book off the shelf from the top of the spine and tore the whole binding off. After a pretty good job of package-taping it back on, I decided it would be one of the very small number of cookbooks that would have its next chapter at the thrift shop. That was four years ago. Ever since then, it has snoozed in a small pile of books destined for the charity shop and never quite making it there. It has been shunned, separated from the community of active cookbooks. It is in a closet.

Naturally, the subject of kebabs came up yesterday in our dinner conversation. The subject was Doner Kebab. I am not going to go into it right now, but Doner Kebab is similar to Gyro and don’t you need one of those rotating stand thingys with the heat lamp and a sword to shave it all down and where are you going to get a giant vertical rotisserie? Do you need a vertical rotisserie? Surely, there must be a recipe for this wonderful dish that has a homemade work-around. I investigate.

First thing, I return to the database where all of my cookbooks are indexed so I can search by recipe. I type Doner Kebab. Nothing. I am surprised. I type Gyro. One recipe. I am again surprised. I thought there’d be more. I leave my personal database and go a general cookbook index. This index has of this writing 167,816 cookbooks indexed. I type Doner Kebab. Out of the 2,550,773 recipes, 34 of them were for Doner Kebab. Many of the 34 recipes were weird and wild variations on Doner Kebab, including a mince pork Banh Mi, pressed duck, and a vegan type of deal no thank you bob. Of all the recipes I, well, skimmed, I found 3 recipes that seemed authentic and familar. One of them is from my big red Turkish cookbook destined for the charity shop and never quite making it there.

I have only ever regretted parting with a cookbook once, and that was when I gave my copy of The Jewish Cookbook by Claudia Roden away. Why did I do this? What was I thinking? I still search in used bookshops. What fool would give away their copy of The Jewish Cookbook by Claudia Roden? Well, this fool did. Maybe that’s why the little stack of books never makes it to the thrift shop. Someday, I will look for something, a new cooking challenge, something neglected, and realize that what I was looking for was in one of those books, and hadn’t that happened this morning? I leaped from the chez lounge and ran down the hallway. I opened what used to be a coat closet and is now a book warehouse. My eyes darted to and fro, scanning quickly every spine up and down and side to side. I see it, I grab it (carefully, carefully), I rush it my table and go quickly to the Doner kebab recipe, the first line of which reads as follows: For this recipe you will need a large vertical rotisserie.