No Toum For You

Here's the deal: I like toum. And when I say I like toum, I mean I like like toum.  Toum, you say? Tis garlic sauce, by any other name. And, my favorite condiment when eating Lebanese cuisine, especially shawarma. Not that there's anything wrong with that but here's my dilemma: sometimes I crave garlic sauce at home. And that involves going to my local shawarma restaurant to get a take out of said sauce. And that process can be a bit awkward, merely ordering a $1 of toum to go. And, they don't give you the free bread line when you order your toum at a table. So, I decided to try making it myself.  A quick trip to the internet turned up numerous recipes - the big difference seemed to be a controversy regarding the use of eggs - some were are for it, while others find the addition abhorrent. I chose an eggless recipe, as I had not eggs in the house. Otherwise, it seemed a straightforward oil, garlic, lemon juice process. What followed was a recipe for disaster - and most definitely not food processor worthy. The whole runny mess (instead of tasty fluffy sauce) left a bad taste in my mouth (literally). Don't ever trust a recipe from the internet. Who do these people think they are? 

The ideal result

 Mine

Seinfeld, a little show about nothing that featured a co-dependent group of losers that bumbled through life (and New York) on NBC from 1989-98. Yadda yadda, yadda...maybe you've heard of it? Well then no soup for you!

The Recipe: Don't try this at home. Swallow your pride and get take out

¼ cup lemon juice

2 cups Sunflower or any other neutral oil Do not use olive oil

½ cup peeled whole garlic cloves

½ teaspoon salt

Put salt and garlic cloves in food processor and pulse. Scrape the sides until all the garlic is the same in size.

Turn on the food processor once again and do not stop it until done. In a very thin stream, add ¼ cup oil very gradually. Please do add it very slowly, don’t rush it or the sauce will split. Once you have added ¼ cup oil, add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice also very slowly, drop by drop. Add another thin stream of ¼ cup oil then 1 teaspoon lemon juice. Keep doing this until you have used up your lemon and oil. The process will take 10 minutes. Be patient. If your sauce has split by the end of it and isn’t a fluffy dip, you can try to add 2 teaspoons of cold water or add 1 ice cube and whack on the processor again for a few minutes. If that hasn’t worked, abort mission or *gulp* add a raw egg white and process for another 3 minutes.