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foooood in germany

dürüm döner

so, a long time ago i promised to write about the middle-eastern food from our neighbourhood… but never really got around to it. let’s give it another go, starting with the basics! one of the first things we learnt when moving to neukölln is the difference between a normal döner and a dürum döner. we had no idea what a dürüm was when we moved here, but we were quickly brought up to speed. first, some basics (do correct me if i’m wrong):

– a kebab is roasted meat, usually on a skewer.
– a döner, or döner kebab, is a ‘rotating roast’ – the thing that you see in the kebab shops with the meat hanging there.

that said, normal döners are served in pita or sandwich bread… and often a mess to eat, with stuff falling from the sides at every bite… dürüms have the same stuff inside, only wrapped in a much neater package: a thin flat bread, which is itself wrapped in foil! :D

there are lots of varieties of dürüms, from adana (above, my favourite) to beyti… but that’s for another post! :)

Categories
foooood in germany

halloumi

we live in a middle-eastern neighborhood, a small island of strange accents, shisha bars and small turkish shops. and since their food is cheap and tasty, we like to indulge in it every once in a while. i can say that by now, we’ve tried and learnt more about middle-eastern specialities than we have german ones… so why not write a sort of glossary about them?

first up (cheese will always come first), halloumi!

we quite like halloumi. traditional from cyprus, it’s a cheese made with goat and sheep’s milk. it feels like mozarella, but saltier, and since it is usually fried or grilled, it reminds us a bit of the slovenian fried cheese. all the falafel shops seem to have a variation of the halloumi salad above, usually with some mint in them. yum! :)