Lmst

My Homemade Version of a Kebab

One of my and my family’s favorite street food — whether it was in Switzerland, Germany, or Italy — has always been Döner Kebab. Döner being the Turkish word for something that’s rotating, and Kebab meaning roast meat.

There are quite a few restaurants that sell Döner Kebab here in Bali. But firstly, they are very expensive (the price/value ratio is a disaster), secondly, the food doesn’t even taste good, and thirdly, the sauces they use seem to contain additives because my family and I often felt unwell after having eaten one of these Kebabs (@Monch from The Monching’s Guide: Remember what you told me about MSG? I somewhat fear that this could be the culprit in the case of the sauces, too)

So, as I’ve done with many other dishes, I decided to prepare our Döner Kebab myself from scratch.

In one of our orders, they had used a very nice and fluffy flatbread, so I decided to make one with yeast, instead of the yeast-free flatbread I used for example in my Gyros dish.

As for correctness, our Döner Kebab isn’t really a Döner because the meat served in Döner Kebab is prepared on a long, rotating metal skewer which is roasted with gas flames, and then gradually sliced off it. That’s why I call my dish just Kebab.

The dish is quite satiable, but because my family and I had been working on a new chicken house for our hen Henriette, we were pretty hungry. So it was enough for us 3, but would probably also feed 4 persons.

The pan fried chicken, and the Tzatziki sauce pair perfectly with the red and white cabbage

So here are all the ingredients I used in our Kebab:

Ingredients (for 3 quite hungry eaters, or 4 with average hunger)

Pickles

2 carrots
1 small daikon radish
1/2 small red cabbage
1/2 small cabbage
10m ml vinegar (1:4 if concentrated)
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

Tzatziki sauce

250 ml homemade Kefir*
2 Balinese cucumbers (or 1 normal one)
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon salt

Dough

250 g bread flour
3 tablespoons oil
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
180 ml water
3,5 g instant yeast
30 ml water
1 egg

Meat

1 deboned chicken breast (3 deboned chicken legs or a mixture of breast and legs are perfect, too)
4 shallots
2 garlic cloves
Paprika powder, curry powder, chili powder, salt, pepper to taste

Optional:

Lettuce, chili sauce, raw or roasted onion rings

* you can use yogurt or greet yogurt too, but make sure that it is natural, unsweetened.

Preparation

Wash, peel and cut julienne all ingredients. Put in airtight container, add liquid. Let rest for 4–5 hours in the fridge, moving once in a while, so that all the vegetables get soaked. Get rid of the pickling liquid.

Wash, peel, and grate the cucumbers. Squeeze the liquid out of the grated cucumbers, and place them in a bowl. Peel and grate the garlic onto the cucumbers. Add salt and kefir, and mix well. Cover with a silicone lid, and let rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Measure the water for the dough, add the sugar and yeast, and mix well. Let rest for 8–10 minutes, until it starts bubbling, and the yeast is activated. Mix with all other dough ingredients in a bowl. Grease your hands with a bit of oil, and knead for 7–8 minutes. Let rest for 45 minutes in an oiled bowl, covered with a silicone lid or a humid towel.

Cut the chicken breast into small strips. Peel the garlic cloves and the shallots, and cut them into small cubes.

The flatbread for our Döner Kebab is ready to be baked

After the dough has rested, form a circle the size of your baking tray (mine is 28-30 cm diameter) on a floured piece of baking paper. Cover and let rest for 15 minutes. In the meantime, heat your oven to 240 degrees Celsius (about 460 degrees Fahrenheit), top and bottom heat.

After this resting time, whisk the egg and the 30 ml water in a cup, and brush the dough surface with the water-egg mixture, and let rest for another 10 minutes.

Bake for 8–10 minutes, until the surface of the flatbread has turned golden brown.

While the bread is baking, take the Tzatziki Sauce and the vegetables out of your fridge.

Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a wok or frying pan, and stir-fry the onions and the garlic. Add the rest of the spices, and stir-fry for about 1 minute. Add the meat, and roast it until it is well done, almost starting to get charred.

Take the flatbread out of the oven, cut it into 3 or 4 pieces, and make a cut horizontally across each piece so that it becomes like a triangular bread pocket.

Fill the bread pockets with the pickled vegetables, the meat, and the Tzatziki Sauce.

Enjoy!

Unfortunately, when I first prepared the Kebab, I somehow forgot to add the yeast to my flatbread. Probably because when I prepared other flatbread, I always made them yeast-free.

The second time, the next day, I didn’t have any daikon radish and carrots left, so I only used the red and white cabbage. That’s why you don’t see the daikon and carrots in the photo. Sorry also for the scarce photo quality. I was quite in a hurry when taking the picture, and pretty hungry. But I still wanted to share a photo of the ready to devour Kebab.

Have you ever eaten a Döner Kebab? Back in Switzerland, it was still served with lamb meat. That’s the one I loved most. Which one did you taste, and which one was your favorite?

Feel free to share your impressions in the comments.

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#nooven

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