Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Souvlaki
Summary
Souvlaki (σουβλάκι, souvláki, suˈvlaci; plural: σουβλάκια, souvlákia), is a popular Greek fast food consisting of small pieces of meat and sometimes vegetables grilled on a skewer. It is usually eaten straight off the skewer while still hot. It can be served with or inside a rolled pita, typically with lemon, sauces, vegetables such as sliced tomato and onion, and fried potatoes as a side. The meat usually used in Greece and Cyprus is pork, although chicken, beef, and lamb may also be used in some regions as well as worldwide.
The word souvlaki is a diminutive of the Medieval Greek (σούβλα meaning "skewer") itself borrowed from Latin subula. "Souvlaki" is the common term in Macedonia and other regions of northern Greece, while in southern Greece and around Athens it is commonly known as kalamaki (καλαμάκι meaning "small reed").
In Greek culture, the practice of cooking food on spits or skewers dates to the Bronze Age. Excavations in Santorini, Greece, unearthed sets of stone cooking supports used by the natives of the island before the Thera eruption of the 17th century BC; souvlaki was "a popular delicacy in Santorini back in 2000 BC." In the stone cooking supports, there are pairs of indentations that were likely used for holding skewers and the line of holes in the base allowed the coals to be supplied with air.
In Mycenaean Greece, "souvlaki trays" were discovered in Gla, Mycenae, and Pylos. The "souvlaki trays" (or portable grills) used by the Mycenaean Greeks were rectangular ceramic pans that sat underneath skewers of meat. It is not clear whether these trays would have been placed directly over a fire or if the pans would have held hot coals like a portable barbecue pit. Spit supports appear to "continue in use into the Early Iron Age at Nichoria." In Greek literature, Homer in the Iliad (1.465) mentions pieces of meat roasted on spits (ὀβελός); this is also mentioned in the works of Aristophanes, Xenophon, Aristotle, and others. In Classical Greece, a small spit or skewer was known as ὀβελίσκος (), and Aristophanes mentions such skewers being used to roast thrushes.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Related concepts (2)
Mediterranean cuisine
Mediterranean cuisine is the food and methods of preparation used by the people of the Mediterranean Basin. The idea of a Mediterranean cuisine originates with the cookery writer Elizabeth David's book, A Book of Mediterranean Food (1950) and was amplified by other writers working in English. Many writers define the three core elements of the cuisine as the olive, wheat, and the grape, yielding olive oil, bread and pasta, and wine; other writers deny that the widely varied foods of the Mediterranean basin constitute a cuisine at all.
Santorini
Santorini (Σαντορίνη, sandoˈrini), officially Thira (Greek: Θήρα ˈθira) and Classical Greek Thera (English pronunciation ˈθɪərə), is an island in the southern Aegean Sea, about southeast from the Greek mainland. It is the largest island of a small circular archipelago, which bears the same name and is the remnant of a caldera. It forms the southernmost member of the Cyclades group of islands, with an area of approximately and a 2011 census population of 15,550.