I’m very fond of İskender Kebab.
"Kebapçı İskender" is a dish, trademarked by the İskenderoğlu family, and it consists of Turkish bread, butter, lamb, domates sosu, (Turkish tomato sauce), and sheep’s yoghurt. İskender kebap is available in many restaurants throughout Türkiye, mostly under the name İskender kebap or sometimes Bursa kebabı.
But outside Türkiye, İskender kebab is the classy choice at a kebab shop. A döner kebab is for eating at 2am, on the way home from a gig. A pide or gözleme is for sharing with your housemates at home, on a weekend, where none of you are strictly sober.
But an İskender kebab has style. I mean, you have to use cutlery to eat it!
I should here admit that I’ve never been to Türkiye. All my experience of İskender Kebab, and Turkish cuisine in general, is based in Sydney (and Melbourne, on occasion). Not the most authentic Turkish dish perhaps, but still. It’s very popular in Australia; the majority of kebab shops feature it on their menus.
But I’ve discerned something about the dish. It’s kinda-sorta Turkish shepherds’ pie. This statement might be queried by some, but let me explain.
Traditional Georgian/Victorian shepherds’ pie is made with leftover roast lamb, minced fine, mixed with leftover greens, minced onions, and minced, stale bread, cooked with stock and leftover gravy, then layered in a baking dish, with mashed potato layered on top, and then baked. Of course, İskender kebab is upside down shepherd’s pie, in that the carbohydrate is on the bottom , and the meat is on top of that.
Like shepherd’s pie, İskender Kebab is supposed to be made with leftover lamb. And like shepherd’s pie, it’s based mostly on leftovers. But it’s more restaurant leftovers, rather than household leftovers. Leftover cooked kebab meat, stale bread, butter, domates sosu, yoghurt … all things that a busy Turkish restaurant in the 1890’s would have lying around.
But as I explained, I’ve only ever eaten Turkish food in Australia. And kebab shops here make İskender Kebab a little differently than back home. We use sliced kebab meat on Turkish bread and domates sosu, which is Turkish tomato sauce, sure, but we use about 10% of the butter and we use cacik, which is Turkish garlic/yoghurt sauce, rather than plain sheep’s milk yoghurt.
So. Here’s my recipe for …
İskender Kebap
Ingredients
* 2 cups cubed Turkish bread, oil spray, ½ cup melted butter, 3 cups sliced roast lamb, salt, pepper, 2 cups domates sosu, 1 cup cacik.
First, prepare the bread, the lamb and the two sauces. Next, spray a baking slide with oil spray, put the bread cubes on the dish, spray it with oil spray, then shake it around a bit and spray it a bit more. Bake the bread at 200°C for ten minutes, shake it around some, and bake it for another few minutes, until it looks nicely toasted.
Grease a two litre casserole dish with some melted butter. Add the Turkish bread to the casserole dish, drizzle it with the rest of the butter, and smooth it down. Layer the lamb over the bread and season it well with salt and pepper. Spoon the tomato sauce over the top of the lamb and smooth it down. Put the lid on the casserole dish and bake the casserole at 175° C (350° F) for around twenty minutes. Take the casserole out of the oven, carefully spoon the yogurt sauce over the top of the tomato sauce, and put the casserole back in the oven, with the lid off, for five minutes.
Serves four.
Domates Sosu
Ingredients
* Olive oil, ½ cup diced onion, 2 tbsp crushed garlic, ½ cup roasted red capsicum, 1 tsp cinnamon, salt, pepper, 1 tsp ground cumin, 1 tsp ground coriander, 800g tin tomatoes, lemon juice, 1 cup chicken stock.
Heat a tablespoon of oil in a non-stick saucepan. Add the onion, garlic, and capsicum and gently fry it for ten minutes. Add a good heaped teaspoon of the za’atar, the same of cinnamon, cumin, and coriander, and half a teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Gently fry it all for a minute, then add the tomatoes, a good splash of lemon juice, and the stock. Simmer the lot for twenty minutes, stirring it as it simmers. Remove the pan from the heat and blend the sauce until it is smooth.
Makes three cups.
Cacik (The Old Lounge Bandicoot)
Ingredients
* 2 cups plain Greek yogurt, 1 tbsp crushed garlic, 1 tsp salt, 2 tbsp lemon juice, pepper.
Mix all the ingredients together, taste the sauce, and adjust the seasonings.
Makes two cups.
