Chicken Shawarma is basically an Arabic dish from Lebanon, and since I have worked in hotels in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, I have been lucky to sample the authentic thing — the way it is made on the streets and hotels there. It can be made with chicken, lamb or beef.

Essentially, Shawarma is a roadside dish and is best eaten there! But to get it really authentic in your kitchen, there are sometimes ingredients that are a little difficult to procure here, such as the right kind of Tahini paste. What one serves here is basically a lime-flavoured, garlic-based paste.

Also, to marinate it, one traditionally uses something called Labneh (strained yoghurt, which is mildly sour and thick), but we marinate it with normal yoghurt, which gives it a slightly different flavour. Authentic shawarma is also served with the right accompaniments, i.e. pita bread. Here, we often replace this with kathi rolls.

There are several evident diversities in Indian and Arabic cuisine. For example, they use a whole lot of this sort of dried lemon powder called lumi and a curry powder called saluna, while we use a lot of nutmeg and they don’t!

On the streets of the Middle East, you also easily find Mezze, which is like Tapas in Spain, as well as a whole lot of other small things like Baba Ghanoush, Fatoush, Hummus and Tabouleh.

Accompaniments to these are different in different places, like in Syria, you could be served this cauliflower pickle. Another interesting dish from there is called Ouzi, a kind of biryani of baby lamb. The whole succulent lamb is cooked and served in a bed of flavoured rice, which is all together served in a baked phyllo. 

As told to Sapna.Sarfare@timesgroup.com)

Pics: Nikhil Ghorpade

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