I believe that “Lamp” is something of a delicacy in Turkey and as you can see this restaurant in Istanbul offers not only “Lamp Chops” which I am sure are wonderful, but also “Lamp On Skewer” which has to be sublime and just perfect for a light lunch – sorry couldn’t resist that!

You know in Uzbekistan they cook “Lamp” on a skewer but like us, and unlike the Turks, they call the meat ‘Lamb,’ in fact to be absolutely correct they call the ‘dish’ (if that is what you can call meat on a skewer of course) “Shashlik,” and the meat қўй гўшти.

Actually it was the Uzbeks Imperial overlords (the Russians) who ‘encouraged’ the Uzbeks to call қўй гўшти – ‘Shashlik’ using latin characters as us westerners would write it or ‘шашлык’ in cyrillic letters. To be honest the Uzbeks have always called Shashlik ‘кабоб’ which doesn’t make it taste anything less than wonderful. It just makes it very confusing, doesn’t it?

When you eat Shashlik, шашлык or кабоб you generally eat it with Lepyoshka, (I think we won’t bother with the Russian and Uzbek translations for the sake of the writer’s sanity it should be enough to say that) it is a wonderful ‘solid’ bread baked in a stone oven. The dough is usually stuck to the inside of the oven, on the walls.

The oven above is a very modern version of a tradition Lepyoshka oven, as you can see by gas lines on the floor. Tradition Lepyoshka ovens are usually more cave-like because it’s rather likely that they have been hacked out of rock and have a receptacle under the floor for a fire.

Here is a Lepyoshka I nibbled earlier!

I could of course provide you all with the ingredients for the marinade that you coat Sashlik in before you barbecue it and the recipe for Lepyoshka then go on to describe how and why there is a pattern of ‘dots’ on the surface of the Lepyoshka and their significance, but I don’t want to come over all ‘Jamie Oliver’ on you do I? That would be awful.

About the Author

The Cat is one of the most successful feline authors in the history of Catkind. His sharp elegant wit has produced the bestselling book ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and of course the much plagiarised gag of the same name which appears on all of the funniest joke sites on the internet.

Copies of the Cat’s masterpiece of feline literature ‘Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary’ and his latest wonderful book ‘The Cat’s Travelogue’ can be purchased at a bookstore near you or from the internet at Amazon.com and here for the Travelogue The Cat’s Travelogue Paperback Edition or at what The Cat calls his www – wickedly wonderful website here www.thecatsdiary.com where you can not only learn more about me the genius Cat but also play my games they are all paw picked by me and have been described as “exactly what free on-line games should be, fun, free and fantastic.”

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Getting Out – Excerpts from a Cat’s Diary, The Cat, The Cat’s Travelogue, Turkey, Jamie Oliver, Istanbul, Lamb, Uzbekistan, Shashlik, қўй гўшти, кабоб, Lepyoshka, шашлы