Well, I had a funny moment this morning when I went out to look at the question of the day for Friday to see what I would be writing about today and found that I had neglected to type the question into the blog for Friday! So today, you can feel good knowing that I spared you the suspense. :-)
The question of the day was supposed to be "What is a döner kebab?" I ask this question because we have a somewhat sad occasion related to this lovely item. The creator of the kebab, Mahmut Aygün , passed away last week at the ripe old age of 87. He passed away from cancer.
Mahmut Aygün was a Turkish immigrant that moved to Berlin when he was just 16. He opened a small snack site (they are called Imbiss here) to make a living. He brought his traditional meat dish of lamb served with rice. Around 40 years ago, though, he had a wonderful idea of how to serve his snack in such a way that made it very easy to eat on the go. He made a sandwich of sorts that has the meat sliced very thinly from a vertically rotating spit. The meat is put into a pita pocket along with lettuce, tomatoes, and onions. It sometimes also has cabbage and cucumbers. It is topped most traditionally with a yogurt sauce, but sometimes other sauces are used. The first of these new types of sandwiches was served on March 2, 1971.
The döner kebab has spread wide and far in popularity, although in our part of the USA, I had yet to encounter them. Canada and the United Kingdom both have a large following of kebab fans. Here in Germany, they are everywhere. Honestly, about every 4th to 5th block has a kebab stand or shop. Newspaper headlines in Berlin were simply titled "Thanks, Mahmut," upon hearing of his passing. He died in Berlin, having never moved from the place of his invention.
Thanks goes to Telegraph.co.uk for their article on the passing of Mahmut Aygün as well as Wikipedia on the details of the preparation of the sandwich. We have yet to have a kebab here, but plan to soon.
The word for today is sandwich (open-faced): das belegtes Brot (bay leck tehs brote).
The question for the day is "What is a Dirndl?"
Auf Wiedersehen,
Frau Spitzer
