Lebanese Toum | Lebanese Garlic Sauce | Garlic Dipping Sauce | Garlic Mayonnaise | Garlic Aioli
May you fill your New Year with new adventures, accomplishments and learnings!
Sending Good Vibes on your way, on this new year day!
Happy New Year!
January 1
Finally we have put behind the year which we thought would never end. A new year, a new beginning and new hopes of something better and fruitful. Although personally I think 2020 taught me more thangs than the entire 3 decade of my existence taught me. And I am grateful for that, really. If it wasn't for the pandemic I wouldn't have realized what exactly mattered to me and what I really like. I can see I added 55 posts to my blog this year and that was the highest in the decade I had this blog for. But I think I made at least 100+ unique dishes this year, not all of them are up in the blog yet because the post processing of photos and write up takes a lot of time. And managing a day job with social media can be taxing at time. Not to mention I feel lazy also at times when I am a little free.
So what is the new year resolution you may ask. Um, I don't do formal resolutions as such. Because most of the time I keep forgetting them. So I just want to be good in things I do and learn more and more. Also want to explore all new avenues in the food and writing world. I wish I can be same creative this year too. And mainly I wish that everyone is granted a good health this year.
Since I mentioned I want to keep learning new things, so I thought let us start the new year with a new kind of recipe from Lebanese cuisine - Toum.
On the last day of 2020 I went out with a friend and we visited this restaurant named Cafe Arabia where we had ordered a non-veg grilled platter. It came with grilled chicken, sumac chicken tikka, seekh kebab and shish taouk. But what fascinated me most was the beautiful creamy white dip. I couldn't figure out what it was, tasted like a mayo but was so so heavenly. So after coming back home I looked up and understood it is called toum.
Toum is a Lebanese garlic sauce that’s actually more like a spread because of its thickness. It’s super popular to spread it over Shish Tawook, grilled chicken, shawarma, rotisserie chicken and many other Middle Eastern dishes. Its smooth and buttery and tastes heavenly. Toum is pronounced Toom, and in Arabic, it simply means garlic!
It only asked for 4-5 ingredients and apparently it looked easy peasy. But I must agree that though this gets done in a jiffy, it is one of the most technical preparations I have ever made. Technical because you may not get to the right consistency if you are not following the right order of the ingredients! also the speed of blending and adding the ingredients is a key!
The disclaimer is you may not end up with the perfect garlic sauce at the first try, but you will come to know what suits your taste buds perfectly. Like the first batch I made, I felt I need to cut down on the amount of garlic I used. Also on top of the basic toum you can keep on adding any additional flavoring agents you might like.
This sauce goes so well with any grilled or fried preparations - both veg and non-veg.
What is Emulsification?
Emulsion sauces are made by mixing two substances that don't normally mix. To do this, you have to break one of them into millions of miniscule droplets and suspend those droplets in the other substance by vigorously whisking, or rather blending them in a blender or food processor. Emulsions are especially important in creating thick, creamy sauces.
There are specific emulsifying ingredient which cause emulsification. Which means certain substances act as emulsifiers and help two liquids which do not usually mix, come together and stay together (either temporarily or permanently) when the mixture is agitated. In the case of mayonnaise, it's the lecithin in the egg yolks that acts as the emulsifier.
How to make the sauce less pungent?
The germ consists of a tiny future stem and leaf.
The toum recipe calls for de-germed garlic by default but you can bypass it if you can stand a little pungency in your sauce, as de-germing definitely takes a lot of time and patience. But it is always recommended.
If you get fresh harvested garlic you can make toum with the germ on, it wont add to pungency much. But if you are working with old garlic, if you split it into half you will notice the germ has become a little green and well defined. And this adds pungency to the dish in which it is used as whole.
How long can you store toum?
This refrigerates well in the fridge. You can easily store it for 3-4 months. As time goes by the strength of garlic to start to fade.
Preparation Time: 10 minutes
- Garlic cloves - 1/4th cup (approx. 5-7 cloves)
- Canola Oil/ Refined Oil/ Olive Oil - 1 cup (you might not need all)
- Lime juice - 1/2 lemon
- Egg white - from 1 egg
- Salt - as per taste
- Parsley/ rosemary chopped - a pinch
- Mixer Grinder
- Spatula
- Knife
- Sanitized glass jar for storing
0 comments