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

For garnish:

• Parsley/ rosemary chopped - a pinch

Equipment:

• Mixer Grinder
• Spatula
• Knife
• Sanitized glass jar for storing

Procedure (Mixer grinder - with egg white) 

Before we begin, most of the times toum is made with just 4 ingredients - garlic, oil, salt and lime juice. And it is recommended you use a food processor and not a grinder when you are making toum or aioli, because you are going to add the oil in a thin stream while the garlic is being blended. 

Blending the garlic into a smooth paste releases the emulsifiers contained within its cell walls, which stabilizes the sauce without eggs. Alternating the addition of oil with a small amount of liquid, in the form of lemon juice prevents the emulsion from becoming overwhelmed with oil and breaking.

So if you have a food processor and don't want to add eggs, you can check the food processor method mentioned below. 

If you are okay with adding egg proceed with the below process which has 5 ingredients - garlic, oil, salt , lime juice and egg white. And no the sauce doesn't have any stink of egg.

1. Using a paring knife, split each garlic clove in half lengthwise. With the tip of the knife, remove the germ from both halves and discard.

2. Take about 1/4th cup of  de-germed peeled garlics and a pinch of salt into a mixer jar and blend until it’s well mixed, scraping down the sides as necessary with a spatula. Now when the garlic is minced add the egg white and pulse again.

Note: Adding the egg whites to this toum is technically cheating, but it works every time resulting in the fluffy sauce you want which might be difficult to achieve if you using a mixer to make it or making it for the first time. Egg whites are a sure shot solution!

3. Now open the lid of the mixer jar and add a little lemon juice and 1/4 cup oil and pulse it again. Keep repeating it for at least 3 times before you get the fluffy buttery texture into the sauce.

Note: If your garlic sauce split or curdled. Take the whole sauce in a cup and add 1 cold egg white in the blender and add the curdled mix little by little and keep blending till it gets thick

4. Now take a sanitized glass bottle and store the sauce in it. Once it comes to room temperature, chill it for a couple of hours to let the flavours develop in the best manner.

Procedure (Food processor - without egg white) 

Place the de-germed garlic and salt in the bowl of a heavy food processor. Pulse garlic until very finely minced, occasionally removing the lid to scrape down the sides of the blender. Make sure you continue to pulse the garlic until it is completely pureed. The garlic needs to be fully broken down in order for the proteins and stabilizers to be released from within its cell walls. Add 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice and continue processing until a paste begins to form. With the food processor running, slowly drizzle in 1/4 cup oil in a very thin stream, followed by 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice. Keep repeating the process alternating between the two till you get a nice and fluffy sauce.