Delal Sauce

It is herbs preserved by being heavily salted, and it is eaten on raw fruit.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 200 g coriander, leaves and fine stems
• 150 g flat-leaf parsley
• 150 g basil
• 120 g coarse salt

Method

1. IT IS HERBS PRESERVED BY BEING HEAVILY SALTED, AND IT IS EATEN ON RAW FRUIT. Both halves are unusual and both are from the page. Its article says the sauce is made of herbs such as coriander, parsley and basil and is heavily salted in order to keep for longer -- so the salt is a preservative at preserving quantity, not seasoning. A hundred and twenty grams to five hundred of herbs is roughly a quarter by weight, which is far more than you would ever season with and is why the thing keeps for months. And it is spread on fresh fruit and vegetables: its article names unripe green plums and cucumber.
2. THE HERBS GO IN RAW AND ARE CHOPPED, NOT BLENDED. Chopped fine by hand or pulsed in short bursts to a coarse, wet, dark green rubble. Blended smooth it goes slimy and the colour dulls within a day.
3. THEY MUST BE DRY BEFORE THEY ARE CHOPPED. Washed and then spun or towel-dried thoroughly. Water is the one thing that will let it spoil despite the salt.
4. THE SALT IS COARSE AND IT IS WORKED IN. Coarse salt mixed through and then pressed and crushed against the herbs with the back of a spoon until they darken and release liquid. That liquid is the brine the paste sits in.
5. IT IS PACKED DOWN HARD AND KEPT UNDER ITS OWN LIQUID. Into a jar, pressed until the brine covers the surface, and refrigerated. Anything above the liquid line will go mouldy -- push it back down each time you take some.
6. IT IS NOT COOKED AT ANY POINT. There is no heat anywhere in this. Its character is raw herb and salt.
7. UNRIPE GREEN PLUMS ARE THE PAIRING ITS ARTICLE NAMES FIRST. Hard, sour, unripe plums, eaten whole and dipped into the paste; cucumber works the same way. The salt and the sourness are the point of the combination.
8. IT ALSO GOES INTO DRESSINGS. Its article records it mixed into salad dressings, or with olives, garlic or pomegranate. Used that way, nothing else in the dressing needs salting.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Iran · All recipes