Cağ kebabı

History

Ottoman travelbooks of the eighteenth century cite a kebab cooked on wood fire consisting of a horizontal stack of meat, known as "Cağ Kebabı" in the Eastern Turkish province of Erzurum, which is probably the ancestor of döner as we know it.

Etymology

The Turkish word "cağ" is IPA: borrowed from Armeno-Georgian. It means "spit" or skewer. Hence the name of the kebab that consists of meat impaled on a huge spit.

Preparation

Slices of lamb and large quantities of tail fat are left to marinate in a mixture of basil, black pepper, salt and sliced onions for the length of a day. They are then impaled on the spit (Cağ), and stacked thickly. The spit is then locked and transferred to the fire where there is a fairly complicated device that controls the cooking of the spit. This typically includes a mechanism for turning the meat, another one for raising and lowering it, and also dents on the side to move the stack towards the fire as it gets thinner after servings are repeatedly cut away.

Note that the meat used for Cağ kebabı is exclusively lamb.