Halloumi kebab
Form: Same shape as traditional kebab or gyro
Country of origin: Cyprus
What distinguishes it from other methods of bread making: It consists of a pita-type bread filled with Cypriot goat cheese
Category of bread: (9) Kebabs of different types exist in all parts of the Ottoman Empire in various forms: Greece, Turkey and the Middle East . Currently in the West, they are often in the form of fast food. Half the sandwiches sold in France – excluding baguette sandwiches – are kebabs.
Particularity: Cheese lovers consider above all that this particular goat cheese is delicious when served in pita bread.
Ingredients: Pita; slices of halloumi seized in oil; cucumber; cooked onions; leaves of fresh mint; basil, and spices
Cyprus
The word “kebab” only means “small bread similar to pita”, filled with grilled meat, that the Turks call döner kebab, simply because it consists of a rotating meat (döner), like the gyros one sees in most large agglomerations around the world. It is cooked on a vertical spit that rotates in front of gas (sometimes electric) burners. Along with Big Macs or Whoppers, kebabs make up part of the globalization of flavors and mental pictures, and the ability of consumers to conform to what the food giants decide they should be eating. It was a Turkish cook in Berlin who first had the idea of stuffing a pide or pita with döner kebab. It was then that kebab restaurants started outdoing their main American competitors, McDonald’s and Burger King, in Germany and most of Europe.
This little sandwich has not always been out to the conquer the world like the power-hungry Huns. It is also found on the Western side of the Mediterranean, in association with traditional Turkish, Greece (souvlaki served in pita), Serbia, Croatia (cevapi or cevapcici, a grilled-ground meat roll served in a lapinja or soumun), etc. food.
In Cyprus, kebabs are not stuffed with lamb, veal or pork, etc., but with halloumi, a goat cheese that is a specialty of the island and which connoisseurs delight in. All you need to make it is halloumi (it can’t be replaced by any other goat cheese, say the connoisseurs), cucumber, fresh mint, basil, leaf of lettuce, cooked onions or failing that chutney. Just brown the halloumi in oil on both sides in a skillet.