Kebab Khashkhash

This is the Aleppo grill kebab that takes the side of heat. Fatty minced lamb is worked with a lot of parsley, crushed garlic, chilli and spice; the mixture is pressed by hand onto a flat skewer and cooked over charcoal. One plain sauce comes with it: tomatoes charred over coals and crushed. Nothing more. The kebab is laid on the sauce, and the sauce soaks into the bread beneath.

Where the name comes from

Khashkhash means poppy, and there is no poppy seed in the recipe — not in the mixture, not in the sauce. Where the name came from has not been settled in the sources, and it is not invented here: it is unknown. Ask in the restaurant and you may hear an explanation, but nobody produces a document.

How it differs from Aleppo kebab

They are two separate lines on the same menu. Aleppo kebab arrives without sauce: off the skewer, with charred tomato, sumac onion and parsley beside it. Kebab khashkhash is garlicky and hot, and it is served on a bed of sauce. Heat is the other difference. How hot depends on the kitchen; Aleppo cooks with more spice than the rest of the country, so mild here means medium somewhere else.

Where to eat it

At the grill restaurants of Aleppo, in the hours the fire is lit. Charcoal and oven are not the same dish: charcoal is the original, and the oven version is what home and canteen kitchens made of it. You order by the skewer, not by the plate.