Shish k"ofte

[Rudolph C Troike]

With thanks to Alan and one of my Turcophile colleagues (who says d"oner
kebap is better than gyros) for correcting my goof -- d"oner kebap is
indeed slices of lamb put on a vertical spit and roasted, then sliced off
the outside as it cooks. Ground meat formed in balls and cooked like shish
kebap is called shish k"ofte in Turkish.
        I wonder, from the testimony of various contributors, how recent
gyros may be in Greece itself. I have long wondered whether pizza, like
fortune cookies, might be an American invention. On my first visit to
southern Italy in 1962, I couldn't find it, and on a later visit to
northern Italy in 1973, the only place I found pizza was at a tourist
restaurant, where it was cooked with a very thick, hard crust, and had a
raw egg added on top after cooking.

Rudy