[Sca-cooks] European "hot dogs"

[Volker Bach]

"Decker, Terry D." schrieb:
>
> > > We have hot dogs (had them for a long
> > > time, in fact) along with lots of other home-grown
> > > fast foods (the German traditional variety is
> > > sausage with a slice of bread and mustard),
> >
> > Is this on a single slice of bread, not a bun of some type?
> > Thick or thin sliced?
>
> When I was in Germany, it was knackwurst or bratwurst served on a brotchen
> (small roll) with a small plastic cup of mustard for dipping the wurst.  We
> usually got these from street vendors and ate them while wandering around
> the marketplace.

You get both buns and slices. Usually these days
it's a square or triangle of bog-standard toast,
but it used to be a slice of wheat or mixed bread
cut fresh from the loaf (this morning's. Germans
have very high standards when it comes to bread -
or used to) Originally the bread was supposed to
be used to hold the sausage. These days sausages
are often served on cardboard trays that have a
small section perforated to be ripped off and
wrapped around the sausage for eating, which means
the bread slices get thinner and flimsier (ever
tried to grip something in a slice of British-size
toast?). It also means that more people throw them
away rather than use or eat them, which fills me
with almost religious dread. Throwiong away good
bread is just not something you do, in my book.

> > Why do you like the Danish hot dogs better? Is the meat/sausage
> > different? Or is it just the extra additions? Generally here hot
> > dogs are a rather poor grade of meat, although there are some made
> > with better meat and sometimes you can get sausages instead of
> > "hot dogs".
>
> Danish meats, especially the luncheon meats and sausages, are some of the
> best in Europe.

It's partly the meat, but I know that nothing
beats Danish relish and thinly sliced pickles on
hot dog.

> >
> > So, what's a "Doner Kebap"? "Not a hamburger" still leaves a
> > lot of possibliities, even if you limit it to sandwiches that
> > still allows the strange, hardly edible things recently mentioned
> > here. :-)
> >
>
> Doner kebap is meat cooked on an Autodoner as gyros is.  Doner kebap is the
> Turkish version of gyros and is usually made of lamb, where in the US gyros
> is usually beef or a lamb and beef mixture.  I am given to understand, that
> in Greece pork is often prepared in the same manner.

Yep, that's kebap. It's almost the same as gyros,
except that gyros is often pork while kebap, of
course, is not (both cuts are traditionally
prepared from mutton, but these days are usually
beef or pork since it's cheap). However, ordering
gyros at a Turkish snack bar is going to get you
into trouble.

Now, doner kebap is a special way of serving it:
take Turkish flat bread (fluffy and chewy pale
white wheat bread that comes in loaves about a
foot across and 1-2 inches high), cut off a half
or quarter, cut it open along the horizontal plane
and fill it with:

kebap
garlic curd sauce (like tzatziki, except that the
Turks insist it's NOT)
pickled white cabbage
pickled purple cabbage
fresh onion
fresh tomato
mild peppers, red or green
optional hot red pepper sauce or powder, iceberg
lettuce, pickled cucumbers or whatever else the
vendor figures fits

Prepared fresh (they cut the meat from the spit as
you watch) this is as delicious a lunch as you
get. Unfortunately I teach for a living, and the
breath you have afterwards could melt steel.

> I was in Germany in the 60's and doner kebap was unknown.  I suspect it was
> introduced into Germany in the late 70's and 80's when there was an influx
> of Turkish workers.

Yep. In some cities you also get gyros pita, which
is really the same thing except that there, Greek
immigrants are in the majority :-)

Giano