İskender Kebab

Bursa's döner laid over cubed pide, flooded with tomato sauce and finished at the table with butter poured foaming from the pan

Origin: Bursa & Anatolia

From the journey of Tomato.

İskender is a dish of assembly rather than of cooking, and the order is fixed. Cubes of pide bread go down first and are there to drink; thin slices of döner lamb are laid over them; a hot tomato sauce is poured across; a spoonful of thick strained yoghurt goes at the side; and then, at the table and in front of the diner, browned butter is poured foaming over the whole plate from a small pan. The theatre is part of the dish and restaurants that serve it any other way are marked down for it. The attribution is unusually specific and unusually well defended. İskender Efendi of Bursa is credited with turning the horizontal spit on its end in 1867, so that the lamb roasted vertically against the fire and could be shaved down in sheets, and his descendants have run the restaurant continuously since. The family registered İskender as a trademark and has gone to court over its use, which is a rare thing for a dish name and tells you how seriously Bursa takes it. Whether he invented the vertical döner or was the first to make it famous is the part that is genuinely arguable; that the dish is his family's is not. The tomato is what separates it from every other döner in Turkey. Elsewhere the shaved lamb goes into bread with salad and sauce; here it is plated and sauced, and the tomato is cooked down with a little butter into something closer to a light sauce than a paste, poured hot so it soaks the bread underneath without dissolving it. The butter at the end is not a garnish either. It is heated until it foams and just begins to colour, and poured so that it hits the plate audibly. The point is that it emulsifies into the tomato as it goes and coats everything, and a plate that arrives already buttered in the kitchen is a lesser thing.

Ingredients

Lamb

700 g lamb leg or shoulder, sliced very thin, or ready-sliced döner

Marinade

1 onion, grated to a pulp
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Sauce

500 g tinned chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato purée
1 tbsp biber salçası (Turkish red pepper paste)
30 g butter
1 tsp salt, or to taste
1 tsp caster sugar

Base

2 pide or flatbreads, day-old, cut into 3cm cubes

To serve

300 g thick strained yoghurt
4 long green peppers and 2 tomatoes, grilled whole, to serve

To finish

90 g butter, for pouring

Method

Mix the lamb with the grated onion, oil, oregano, salt, and pepper, and leave it for at least an hour, or overnight.
Make the sauce: melt the 30g of butter, add the tomato purée and pepper paste and cook them out for two minutes, then the tinned tomatoes, salt, and sugar.
Simmer for twenty-five minutes until thickened and the oil has come to the surface. Keep it hot.
Grill the whole peppers and tomatoes over a high heat until blistered and set them aside.
Cook the lamb in a very hot dry pan in small batches, so it browns hard and fast rather than stewing. Thirty to sixty seconds a side is enough for slices this thin.
Toast the bread cubes briefly in the pan in the lamb fat until the edges colour but the middles stay soft.
Now assemble in order, and quickly, because everything must be hot. Spread the bread cubes over each warmed plate.
Lay the lamb over the bread, covering it completely.
Ladle the hot tomato sauce across the meat, letting it run down into the bread.
Put a large spoonful of cold yoghurt at the side of the plate rather than on top, and add a grilled pepper and half a grilled tomato.
Heat the 90g of butter in a small pan until it foams and just begins to smell nutty, then carry the pan to the table and pour it over each plate so it hisses.
Eat immediately, taking a little of everything in each mouthful; the yoghurt is meant to be met on the fork rather than stirred in.

Notes

Everything has to be hot except the yoghurt, and the assembly takes less than a minute, so have the plates warm and all four components ready before you start. Day-old bread is better than fresh, since it takes up the sauce without collapsing. Slice the lamb as thinly as you can and cook it in small batches over a fierce heat; crowding the pan gives grey stewed meat. The butter goes on at the table and should foam and colour slightly before it is poured, which is what gives the nutty finish. Biber salçası is worth buying for the sauce; tomato purée alone gives a flatter result.

The Gastrographer

Name: İskender Kebab
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Bursa & Anatolia
Ingredients: 700 g lamb leg or shoulder, sliced very thin, or ready-sliced döner; 1 onion, grated to a pulp; 2 tbsp olive oil; 1 tsp dried oregano; 1 tsp salt; 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper; 500 g tinned chopped tomatoes; 2 tbsp tomato purée; 1 tbsp biber salçası (Turkish red pepper paste); 30 g butter; 1 tsp salt, or to taste; 1 tsp caster sugar; 2 pide or flatbreads, day-old, cut into 3cm cubes; 300 g thick strained yoghurt; 90 g butter, for pouring; 4 long green peppers and 2 tomatoes, grilled whole, to serve

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control