Shawarma, Maafi Mushkil!

After enduring disappointing experiences eating abysmal Shawarmas over and over again, I finally decided to take things in my own hands. A few months back, I made the Shawarma at home. I was delighted to finally relish something that you could call a Shawarma. This was to be the beginning of a life-long Shawarma-fest.

Last month, we had Sareen’s uncle and family visiting us from Kerala. It was a pleasure making the Shawarma, particularly for Sareen’s uncle who’d been in Saudi Arabia for a while. I made everything from scratch - the pita bread, the chicken filling, the dressing and even the Fries. Need I mention that I got positive reviews?
   
I’m not going to post the recipe here; I just referred to recipes that I found online. The marinade for the meat keeps changing based on my audience; the seasonings range from Arabic spices to green or red chili and the tenderizers range from lemon to vinegar to yoghurt. Since I am, as always, too lazy to preheat the oven, I just roast the meat in a wok. More importantly, it is too agonizing to patiently wait for 45 minutes when the alternative takes just about a third of the time.
    
I like making the Tarator, the tangy bitter sauce in the Shawarma. Besides the catchy name, I like mixing spoonfuls of bitter Tahini with garlic, lemon and yoghurt, the ingredients that I like the most.
Making Khubz is easier than making chapatti; you just need to give the dough some TLC aka kneading. While making the Khubz is not a big chore, I really wish for the abundance and access to the myriad Khubz varieties that we have in the ME.

Assembling the Shawarma is probably the only tedious part of the whole process. The one key element that’s missing from my Shawarma is pickled cucumber. The stores here seem to have only sweet pickles, and I haven’t yet cracked the code to the perfect pickled veggie.
  
Now that I’ve recreated the shawarma, I think I’ll move on to another favorite in our household – Foul Mudammes and Biskoot Khubz.

Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul. ~ Dorothy Day