What I understood a ‘kebab’ to be growing up is actually a really simple version of what half the world calls a ‘kathi roll’ (referred to in my earlier posts as ‘karti‘ because that’s how you pronounce ‘kathi’). A kathi roll is an Indian street-food staple of chargrilled meat (typically spiced lamb), diced onions, chopped green or red chillies, possibly some coriander or cucumber, and lemon juice, wrapped inside a fresh roti. Nowadays you can get these pre-made at any Asian grocery store in their fridge section, or even at train stations next to the giant samosas.

My mum, however, used to make a much more delicate, moreish ‘kebab’ in multiples of 20 for special occasions when a platter of sausage rolls or vol-au-vents might normally be called for. Deliciously snack worthy and portable, they frequently got packed into cooler boxes for road trips and holidays. Famously mum once made 200 kebabs for her brother’s wedding, making 20 a night one fortnight and freezing them in batches. On the day of the wedding, a sizeable portion was accidentally tipped over and eaten by the dog! Nobody blamed him. They’re just so delicious!

Sometimes you would find a forgotten stockpile of kebabs wrapped in aluminium foil in the family freezer – joy of joys. More often than not you would come across a small cottage cheese pot containing ‘kebab meat’ as indicated on a hastily scrawled label. This was generally frostbitten and useless, but a reminder that Mum’s core principle was ‘waste not, want not’.

For the rotis, Mum used puff pastry rolled super thin to approximately 6 inches making each bite the perfect balance of meat and stodge – too much roti meant you can only eat a couple of kebabs and you might as well used shop bought wraps or parathas; Mum’s way was to scrimp on pastry, thus enabling you to eat at least 6 kebabs in one sitting, much like you would devour a plate of party-sized sausage rolls. Also, the process of making kebabs is a lovely thing: music in the background, flour everywhere, a hypnotic rhythm of rolling, cooking, filling, stuffing, and eating (one for me, one for the plate!). It is a labour of love.

Whilst browsing my local north-Asian wholesale supermarket this weekend I happened upon these 5 inch pastry squares in the frozen produce aisle.

I seized them and rushed over to the fresh meat counter for 500g of diced baby lamb with dreams of kathi kebabs for the next day. I thought these squares would be an excellent labour-saving buy, requiring no more than a quick roll to make them a little bigger and then firing them onto a scorching tawa. No need for judging the size of each roti from a slab of puff pastry (even though this is pretty straightforward as I can get 16 rotis out of one slab) and no eccentric shapes to deal with.

As it happens, the squares are very thick so in rolling them out they double in size. This made them equivalent to shop bought parathas or wraps and therefore too much roti for the meat (in my opinion).

I thought I solved this by rolling up the kebabs and cutting them in half: still too much roti! I eventually restored the balance by tearing off a bit of roti each time. I said a little ‘sorry’ to Mum in my head while doing so as I’m sure the waste would have been too much for her to bear. Mum would probably have rushed out to get more meat and made double the amount of kebabs (which she could have frozen for future journeys/parties) or found an empty margarine tub and stored all the cast-off strips of pastry.

To speed up the process of stuffing, I mix onions with chopped chillies in a bowl to spread the flavour and then douse everything with lemon juice (from a bottle – not sure why I don’t use real lemons. Must be an Anglo thing. I also use bottled lemon for pancakes!).

Kebabs definitely taste better the next day, half way to wherever you’re going, cold and bit squashed.

We’re off to Scotland on Monday and something tells me I should have made a bigger batch for the cooler box. Oh well. There’ll be deep-fried haggis and Irn Bru where we’re going!

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