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one of the earliest memories i have of really being aware of garlic is my uncles and dad arguing about what to use garlic in while watching a cooking show at my grandmother's house. the sentence that i still remember 'til this day is my uncle nabeel saying “garlic goes with chicken and onions go with beef”. obviously, as a 7-ish year old, i didn't understand what he was talking about. but looking back at it, i now understand what he means. in arabic cuisine, garlic is always used with chicken, and onions with lamb. obviously there are some exceptions but, for the most part, this rule is true when it comes to protein.
ASMR, memories, and tradition.
but protein is not the only thing we use alliums for. one of the defining characteristics of levantine cuisine is what we call a “tash-sheh”, which is a final stage of preparation used for stews. basically, at the end of the cooking process of the stew, we put a lot of crushed garlic with chopped cilantro (sometimes we use other herbs or no herbs at all) in hot olive oil and cook for a few seconds to take the raw edge off of garlic and herbs, then add it to the stew. as soon as the hot oil hits the stew it goes “tshhhhhhh”, and that's why we call it a “tash-sheh”. yes, we have a lot of onomatopoeias in arabic too.
this smell of garlic and cilantro fills the house and apartment building and fills me with memories of coming home from school and the whole building smelling of this.
this smell of garlic and cilantro fills the house and apartment building and fills me with memories of coming home from school and the whole building smelling of this.
it goes without saying that toum is what made shawarmaji. the fact that no shawarma wrap that i had since moving to the U.S. had toum in it was really disappointing for me. back home, that was the main ingredient; the chicken and bread were just an excuse to eat loads of toum. not finding that here was ultimately the reason me and my brother started shawarmaji - we needed to fill that toum void.
traditionally, toum is used for all forms of grilled chicken, whether it be in shawarma, rotisserie, or kabab, we always eat toum with it. it's our favorite sauce to dip fries in, and it goes great with eggs, grilled cheese, calamari, shrimp, even straight up raw tomatoes. all the stuff that garlic loves, toum loves too!
thank you to every one of you who continually support our small family business, allow me to share my musings, and give me the opportunity to live my dream by serving our community the food that i love (and live) to eat.
peace, love, and toum,
chef mohammad abutaha
