Help me make Ottawa's famous Lebanese garlic sauce!

December 6, 2011 11:12 AM

This post made me long for Ottawa's awesome Lebanese food, especially garlic sauce. Help me make it for myself!

I grew up in Ottawa, and fortunately go a few times a year to visit my folks.

Everywhere I go, I try to find shwarma that compares, or even resembles what the Lebanese restaurants in Ottawa do.

Can someone direct me to recipes to make my own Ottawa style, Lebanese garlic sauce?

posted by smitt to Food & Drink (6 answers total)

Best answer: I assume you're referring to toum, which is basically a couple cloves of garlic, egg/white, oil, and lemon juice. This is the recipe I've used several times, and it's delicious. There's a tiny caveat: the version at he Lebanese restaurant I favor was a little starchier, and other sites I found via Google seemed to suggest adding a single peeled potato (either already mashed or quickly baked in the microwave) into the mix would . I haven't tried that method just yet, but I confirmed with the same Lebanese place that potatoes are involved in their version.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:49 AM on December 6, 2011 [5 favorites]

"...into the mix would work," that is.
posted by zombieflanders at 12:26 PM on December 6, 2011

I just bookmarked that toum recipe yesterday and cannot wait to make it. I had only ever known it by the names "garlic sauce" or skorthalia or skordalia, the Greek name. Most of the skorthalia recipes I have found call for either bread (and almonds, in that one) or potato for starch.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:32 PM on December 6, 2011

Also, if you have an immersion blender, it may be worth making a batch usingthis two-minute mayo method, which basically involves adding all the ingredients (apart from the finely chopped/minced garlic) before blending. I did it last night and while it looked like the emulsion wasn't going to hold at first, it turned out alright.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:41 PM on December 6, 2011

Ugh, not my day today. What I meant to say was that you needed to have the garlic pieces as small as possible beforehand.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:43 PM on December 6, 2011

Response by poster: I'll give that a try!
posted by smitt at 6:58 PM on December 6, 2011