Shash in the Persian word for "six", and lik is Turkic for "from". That's where we get the shish in shish-kebab. It is meat on a stick. Based on the name, I suppose there should be six pieces on each stick, but you will see it comes in all sizes.
For the last year, we have been living with a family who is in the shashlik business. They prepare the meat in a room directly under our part of the house, but they cook it and sell it at two of the weekly bazaars on the edge of the city.
In this post, we will take you through the process (at least for the parts we have pictures of).
A couple of mornings each week, a cart like this one shows up at our front door. Depending on the season, they go through 200 kilos of dead cow per week...
At any given time, there are between 1 and 8 people in the basement working. Here the group takes a break for a pose...
They pick off the good meat for the kind of shashlik with big pieces. Everything else gets thown in the grinder, along with some salt and bread to stretch it...
This little guy is cutting up sheep butt-fat into small peices that the ground-beef version is rolled in...
Then they take it to the bazaar to sell...
It gets pretty smoky...
Lakim, my host brother and manager of the business, says that he's tired of meat, and that he won't eat shashlik until he retires from making it...
The finished products. Chicken, ground beef, beef (with lamb fat), and beef (with beef fat). Delicious...
2 comments:
Oh man! You guys are making me hungry. I can still taste the dumba saturated beef. Wow, I really miss it. A lot!
Me too, Nathan. I already bought some more skewers, so Jen, we are ready for you to make some when you get home!(but without the lamb fat!:)
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