John Kerry’s turkey shwarma got me thinking about the food of the Levant, which naturally brought me to garlic sauce, the delicious emulsified eggless aioli popular in the region.

In preparation for the long holiday weekend – Memorial Day – I made some, with three whole heads of garlic, half a teaspoon of salt, a cup of oil and some lemon juice. Voila, garlic sauce or Sos Lay, as they might say in kreyol here in Haiti.

It wasn’t quite the Lebanese toum, which could be the consistency of butter (see left). Regular consumption of toum is famously supposed to help gain your health and lose your friends.

My version was more fluid and smelt wonderfully strong, tasted gloriously smooth. Heaven in a jar. It will work just as well as the toum I think to help gain our health (but hopefully, not lose our friends).