makroun bi toom - a Lebanese dish from my childhood

I promised you some recipes from Sunday Cookfest, which I held during October. I found it really hard to pick my favourites, as we made so many things on the day! There were two dishes that everybody loved and the savoury dish was one of my favourites.

My auntie who is here from Lebanon and my dad made a dish I loved helping my mum and dad make when I was growing up, called 'makroun bi toom', literally meaning pasta in garlic! Here are my dad and my auntie rolling out the dough on a patterned glass. 

My friend Deb and my mum had a go too!

It is a kind of dough dumpling, boiled up and slathered in a very simple sauce of a good olive oil, lots of garlic and a squeeze of lemon juice. It might seem like too much raw garlic, but the hot dumplings seem to cook through the garlic and warm the olive oil. It is totally addictive!

I am not sure of it's exact origins, but I can only assume like other peasant food it was made by accident by someone who didn't have any fresh ingredients to cook with and not much money. You will find traditional Lebanese food is like this - very few ingredients, nourishing and very tasty. Here are our dumplings, ready for cooking.

makroun bi toom  

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 500g plain flour
• 1/4 teaspoon of yeast
• 2-3 teaspoons of salt
• 6-8 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 T freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 cup of olive oil

Method

1. In a small cup, melt the yeast with warm water.
2. Mix the flour and yeast mixture with 1 teaspoon of salt and 200 ml of water (approx 1 cup) until it comes together. Knead by hand until you get a nice soft dough. Let the dough rest, covered for 30 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, make the garlic sauce. Peel and crush the garlic cloves and place in a large bowl. Add salt, olive oil and lemon juice.
4. Sprinkle some flour on your working area and start forming the dough into a “snake” form.
5. Cut the “snake” of dough into 4cm long pieces.
6. Place your index finger on each cut dough, and roll inwards towards yourself while punching a wedge inside the dough. Alternatively, you can roll the dumplings onto a patterned glass as my dad and auntie are doing in the background in the photo above. The point here is to create a wedge inside the dough so that it cooks through well, so feel free to get creative in figuring out how to do it your own way. Place dumplings on a large flat tray til ready to cook and sprinkle with some extra flour so they don't stick together when cooked.
7. Drop dumplings into a large pot of salted water. Cook for 3-4 minutes. The dumplings will float to the surface when they are ready. Strain the dumplings (a small amount of water is OK, and mixes well with the sauce).
8. Immediately add dumplings to the garlic sauce, stir through and eat hot! Here is our finished dish.

We found that this was a common favourite at Sunday Cookfest and so moreish.Stay tuned for my husband's famous honeycomb next time and tell me what memories you have of favourite childhood dishes.