“Here is a recipe for an oven-roasted version of the flavorful street-side classic usually cooked on a rotisserie. It is perfect for an evening with family and friends. Serve with pita and tahini, chopped cucumbers and tomatoes, some olives, chopped parsley, some feta, fried eggplant, hummus swirled with harissa, rice or rice pilaf. You can make the white sauce that traditionally accompanies it by cutting plain yogurt with mayonnaise and lemon juice, and flecking it with garlic. For a red to offset it, simmer ketchup with crushed red pepper and a hit of red-wine vinegar until it goes syrupy and thick, or just use your favorite hot sauce instead.”
This recipe is contributed by Sam Sifton. He is the founding editor of NYT Cooking, and an assistant managing editor leading culture and lifestyle coverage for The New York Times. He’s the author of three cookbooks, and one of the writers of the Cooking newsletter. He was previously The Times’s food editor, culture editor, national news editor, restaurant critic and columnist for The New York Times Magazine. His most recent cookbook is No-Recipe Recipes. He lives in Brooklyn with his family. He graduated from Harvard College.
Sifton adds, “It’s a dish I developed in a South Florida kitchen a decade ago, to bring the taste of late-night rotisserie shawarma into my in-laws’ home, thousands of miles away from where I’d traditionally eaten it on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in Berlin, in Melbourne. They’d never had shawarma. In the years since, they’ve had a lot of it. I’d like to think this recipe has brought people joy.”
(Linda Xiao for The New York Times. Food Stylist; Hadas Smirnoff. Prop Stylist: Megan Hedgepeth)
Yield: 4 to 6 servings
