Lebanon is a tiny country of about four and a half million people in the Middle
East it's bordered by Syria to the north and to the east and by Israel to the
south. And its unique position sort of makes it a cultural and ethnic
crossroads for the Middle East
it was originally inhabited by the Phoenicians and then over the centuries
it was conquered and reconquered by the Romans and by the Assyrians and by the
Ottoman Turks and then more recently by the French
the result is that it's this really interesting mishmash of different
cultures
the place we're going to right now is called saj bakery
that's run by these two brothers Mel Charlie and they serve traditional
shawarmas, zatars and flatbread cooked on this giant oval pan that's also
called a Saj we're headed there right now and I can't wait to try some of this
lebanese food.
-Welcom to Saj Bakery -I would definitely like a shawarma sandwich with
beef and chicken -Half and Half?
-Yeah can I do that? I want to try the man'oushe?
I would also like the Saj Bread?
-Can I have that with cheese and Zatar? -Yes.
Anything else you recommend?
number three. it's lebanese zata and veggies. And thick yogurt.
Oh thats yogurt? okay we'll try that too. This is going to be so much food
tell me the story about the mural on the wall?
so obviously we're all about authenticity
so what we did there our goal was to show how the Saj bread started back in
the day
like thousands of years ago up in the mountains of Lebanon just exactly what
there is. It's a man and his wife she's making the bread spreading it out and
he's putting it on that Saj which is like that piece of metal to make it and cook
it
-Charlie how long have you been been cooking? -since 12 years old
-since you were 12? I used to help my job dad he used to be a butcher on your
mmmhmmm
-after the college I went to culinary school -Oh yeah?
Six years.
-oh that's awesome did your mom and dad both cook or was it mostly your dad or...?
-My mom cook
absolutely all the people there everybody cook at home mom's
always cook at home
so like every time you come home every day every night every day that we have
food at the table
-she's a good cook -yeah oh yeah she's great yeah she helps here something.
She does!
isn't it the hummus or the tabouleh -sometimes she did she make it
and you I mean have you noticed that there's that there's a response from
from the Lebanese community did that they did this is something...
Oh yeah we feel like... they feel like they're in Lebanon when they come here.
this is the saj bread that we saw beautifully cooked on the giant hot
Saj and then inside we have the zatar which is a spice mixture that's
primarily thyme and then we also have some of this cheese, a salty white
cheese that is also partially sheep's milk
it's just very simple, very large flat piece of bread filled with slightly
pleasantly chewy white cheese? almost like a cheese curd if you've ever had a
cheese curd you know how it has that little squeak and then you've got this floral
herbal mixture that is ver...y it's a very heavy thyme flavor but then you also get
a little bit of olive oil and sesame
think of it as a middle eastern quesadilla or something... we have the shawarma.
Now the shawarma, as you saw, is essentially layered meat on a spit. the fat and all
the delicious drippings from the meat kind of trickle down. all that good stuff
gets down on the vegetables too and it makes it taste really good
this chicken shawarma is is 'A+' you get a lot of lemon, a big kind of orange
hint in the chicken shawarma is really really nice
and then the pickles offset that fatty chicken and now the yogurt kind of peeps
through the whole thing and kind of mixes it kind of it kind of brings it
all together it kind of holds all of the different ingredients and flavors
together and then you have this nice lavash like flatbread. Very soft bread -
pliant but kind of swaddling all the ingredients together like a little baby
that I then put in my mouth and bite its head off
I heard a couple of words being bandied about, mana'osh and mana'ish
that mana'ish plural more than one. mana'osh which is singular so here i
have and i am about to enjoy my mana'osh and this is with the cheese
the white cheese that is mixed with a sheep's milk cheese and also Soujouk which
is a cured spice Middle Eastern sausage I don't know if it's specifically lebanese
this looks like a pepperoni pizza. just not let's not fool ourselves as to
what this looks like
I'm sure it is different though. The white cheese it's very salty it's
saltier than your normal cheese than you might expect
and then on top of it is the Soujouk. the spices remind me a little bit of the
shawarma spices
all in all it makes a pretty damn good lebanonese pizza.
let's move on to our final mana'ish, Zaatar with Labneh. That is half and half
and then it is covered in vegetables it's covered in a mixture of black
olives cucumbers tomatoes fresh mint and it's all on that beautiful fresh flat
bread and with also with the Zaatar spice mixture the flatbread is very well made
delicious the consistency of the yogurt of the lemon is almost bordering on
very tart I think that reacts nicely with the strong leader of all sesame and
time of the zatar
this is lovely as well I'd like to thank you all for tuning into this episode of
dining on a dime from saj bakery in granada hills
if you'd like to watch more please click here it literally is not just one person
one idea
it's literally a bunch of people coming together