How do you feel about vampires?
Odd question, I know.
Maybe the better question is, do you think you eat enough garlic to ward off vampires (better question, no?)?
Well, if you ask me, I think I’m pretty safe.
But that wasn’t always the case…it wasn’t the case at all until I met my pal Cosette and the elixir called toum.
What Is Toum?
I’ll just tell you in Cosette’s words, as she describes it best:
“Toum is no stranger to Arab cuisine, it’s been around for centuries from the time of using a mortar and pestle to make the creamy garlic sauce. Grandmothers all over Lebanon and surrounding countries have made Toum for chicken on Sundays since the dawn of time. It’s quintessential and one of the best kept secrets to create the most flavorful food.”
Cosette’s background is Lebanese and she has mastered this garlic paste and all of its uses!
How Do You Use It?
As you will see on her blog post, traditionally, it was used as a ‘dip’ for cooked chicken but she has a bunch of recipes that you can use it with.
I use it wherever you would use garlic. Obviously, you would use it on things like roasting chicken and potatoes, but these are the ways I use it:
- I slather a tablespoon or so on the base of pizza before I dress it (next level flavour!!)
- I add it to my saucepot before I begin making my tomato sauce – game changer because you can add it right to the post with the tomatoes (and then you don’t have to worry about burning your garlic – which is always a bad thing because it will make the whole pot bitter!).
- I’ll brush it on top of baked dinner rolls and then dust it with parm as it cools off – super yum!!
As always, you can go straight to Cosette’s blog post (you can find Cossette’s Kitchen Toum recipe here) but let’s just quickly go through the process:
Get a boatload of garlic (you actually don’t need that much – just about 3 heads) and make sure it’s fresh and not dried out:
Separate the cloves:
Peel the cloves (you can try this hack and let me know how it works!!).
Now fill a dry measure with cloves and then fill it with water…
Now, pour the whole mixture into a food processor and mix until pasty…
Now, HERE IS THE TRICK…slowly stream the oil in …VERY SLOWLY (the photo below is even too fast!!!). Sometimes, the feeder tube of your food processor has tiny holes to stream oil in slowly…check yours to see if there is a streaming hole on your tube.
And, when it’s all in, it will almost look like mayonnaise!!!!!
Now if you have any questions about:
- how to fix a broken toum
- how to use toum
- how to store it
or pretty much anything about this magic elixir, I suggest you visit Cosette’s blog and read all about it there!!
And, if you follow her on IG… you will fall in love!!
Cossette’s Kitchen Toum – find her recipe here
Now, let’s all go and ward off some vampires!!
