11 April Thursday

Having crested my turkey wave, I’d been at a bit of a loss to come up with a new food frontier. Last night, in a dream, it came to me. It is time to confront my thing with kebabs. In vivid detail, at a tented food cart out on the street, I was cutting vegetables, forming meat around stainless steel skewers and setting them tenderly on a grill. When I woke up this morning, I fully expected there to be kebabs for breakfast in my kitchen. Peace, peace, Mercutio, I talk of dreams which are the children of an idle brain. Still and all, I believe my time with kebabs has come.

I remember my mother occasionally making them when I was a kid, which was not too exciting in my opinion grown-up food. It seems to me as my tastes expanded, I loved foods that were mixtures of things. A stew, or quiche or vegetable stir-fry, an amalgam of shapes, flavors, textures. Sauces, secret ingredients, surprise additions. Flavorful formulae, magical potions devised by Merlin. Kebabs, are of course, an anti-mixture. By nothing less than the point of a sword these items are ruthlessly segregated. The clump of meat tastes like a clump of meat, and the crunchy vegetable tastes like crunchy vegetable. No mystery, no subtlety, no perfume, just hacked up bits on a stick. To me, I didn’t like pulling the charred morsels off the skewer, some of which would stick, leaving little shreds of meat behind. Or the mushroom would resist, only to go flying off across the room when I tried to pry it. What a hassle. So, inspired by good sleep, I am going to explore my relationship with kebabs. OK, back to this in a second. First things first.

I have come into a great bounty of oranges. It is a great thing, but also a bit of a tragedy because I am in competition with the white and blue mold that quietly develops on the bottom of the oranges at night to consume them. Before any other activity today, I processed all those babies. Now, I have a red kettle full of candied orange peel, and a large pitcher of wonderful tart juice, which I am sipping now. What a treat. Next, a glut of bell peppers and hot house tomatoes. What to do? Well, of course, we’re having black bean veggie tacos for lunch! Finally, three rotten bananas. Banana bread. These clear the table space and head space for kebabs to come.

Now wait a minute here. My mother makes the kebabs known as Shish. I found a website that says “Let’s explore the 21 most popular types of kebabs”. There are a least 21 types of kebab. Great, there goes my summer. Shish kebabs are not the ones I was making in my dream. Kebabs originate in whatever country the recipe writer comes from. I have recipes for Russian, Turkish, Greek, German, Iranian, Persian, Egyptian, and Brazilian kebabs, not to mention the French and their precious brochettes. There is even a US State, South Dakota to be exact, which has its own unique variation called Chislic kebab. So that is where they come from. Shish is the most popular in the United States. It is widely believed to have come from Turkey and is the cubes of meat and vegetables on skewers. What kind was I making in my dream? It was like a meatball paste mixture which is molded around the skewer. OK, I found it. I was making Shish kofte kebabs. Sheesh! Shish kebabs are typically made with cubed lamb. Mother uses cubed beef, a variation called Basturma, which originated in Russia. I feel like I may have lifted Pandora’s grill lid here.

Day is done, and my black bean chili was delightful. I used a green Chile blend I got from Oaktown Spice Company and it is tangy, sour, and piquant. Yes, piquant is the word. More to come.