Toum

Method

1. Blend the garlic and salt to a fine paste in a food processor, stopping twice to scrape down. Any lumps left now will never emulsify.
2. Add a teaspoon of lemon juice and blend again.
3. Now the slow part. With the motor running, add the oil in a thread so thin it is almost drips, for the first 100 ml. This is where every failed toum fails. Once it visibly thickens and turns white you can speed up to a slow steady stream.
4. Alternate. Every 100 ml or so of oil, add a splash of lemon juice or ice water. This keeps the emulsion from getting too tight and breaking.
5. Rest it an hour before tasting, and preferably overnight in the fridge. Fresh from the processor it is savage. A day later it is merely very strong.

If it breaks

It is recoverable, and this is worth knowing before you start. Pour the broken mixture into a jug. Put a tablespoon of ice water, or one cooked and cooled floury potato, in the clean processor bowl, and drizzle the broken mixture back in slowly as though it were the oil. It comes back almost every time.

Notes

• Never olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil contains polyphenols bound up in its structure, and the shearing action of a blade breaks them out, which turns the sauce bitter and metallic within minutes. This is not a preference; it is why every Lebanese recipe specifies a neutral oil.
• Cut the green germ out of each clove. In older garlic it is noticeably bitter, and there is nothing else here to hide behind.
• It mellows enormously. Day one it is close to unbearable neat. By day three it is round and garlicky and you will start putting it on everything.
• It keeps a month in the fridge in a sealed jar, and the flavour improves for the first week.
• What to do with it. The traditional partner is grilled chicken. It is also very good stirred into rice, spread on a sandwich, thinned with lemon into a salad dressing, or through roast potatoes at the end.

Ingredient substitutions

• A tall narrow jug and a stick blender works and is arguably easier than a food processor, because the blade stays submerged. Start with the blender pressed to the bottom and lift it very slowly.
• Cold-pressed rapeseed oil has its own flavour and is fine if you like it. Refined sunflower oil is the neutral standard.

Sources consulted

• Serious Eats: toum, Lebanese garlic sauce

Good with

• Barbecue chicken
• Smooth hummus
• Soft Greek pita: pocketless and stovetop-cooked

From Christoph Mayer

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