Top sandwich: Alan Geaam’s crispy galette – 20 minutes
- Faced with the health crisis, chefs and restaurateurs must adapt.
- Chef Alan Geaam is opening a new street-food address with, à la carte, Lebanese wheat and corn flour pancakes cooked on a cast iron dome.
- For 20 minutes, he details the recipe for his “manouché”, a cake that is both hearty and crispy with zaatar and raw vegetables.
Sâj… like an image, but far from clichés. The starred chef Alan geaam opened
a Lebanese pancakes counter a quick bite to eat, rue de Montmorency (Paris 3rd), a stone’s throw from
Qasti, his Lebanese bistro opened just before the first confinement. “It is not because the restaurants are closed that we must deprive ourselves of gluttony and sharing, he believes. The streets offer this possibility. »Cut into small sandwiches, his sâj are invitations to stroll.
His street-food project, Alan Geaam had it in mind for a while. “Considering the situation more than uncertain, I said to myself that it was the moment to launch out rather than to give up! »And the Lebanese leader, whose 20 minutes has, in the past, praised the carpaccio of langoustines that it serves at its starred table (Paris 16th), has done rudely well.
On the curved sheet of the markouk
Cooked on a curved sheet called markouk (but a large pan does the trick), the pancakes that Alan serves on the sidewalk stand out from those that delight the Lebanese all day long by the fact that they are… hypercopious. It’s a well-kept secret, but we imagine that chef Alan Geaam very carefully sieved his mixture of wheat and corn flours in yeast and lukewarm water before slowly making a dough in which he incorporated this you need olive oil. “My recipes are faithful to traditions,” he explains. But the dough is worked differently, so that we can be satisfied with a single pancake that is crisp, light and delicious. “
We particularly appreciated the manouché (7.90 euros), with its bread covered with a mixture of zaatar spices (hyssop, savory, oregano, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, sumac, sesame …) marinated in olive oil. ‘olive. With a few cucumber sticks, slices of fresh tomatoes, mint leaves and finely chopped spring onion, stuck in the middle of the sâj pancake, once folded. Dip it in a labneh cheese sauce, accompany it with succulent mezzes or bite into it as is, you will find in the mouth the aromas and flavors that bring Alan Geeam back to Tripoli and his childhood memories.