Tkemali Sauce Recipe: Georgian Sour Plum Sauce for Winter
Tkemali is a great sauce for grilled meat and shashlik, and the base of many Caucasian dishes, above all kharcho soup.
I remember, many years ago, back when I was still at school, I was spending the holidays at my grandmother's in the village. My aunt came by and said she had seen from the bus, along the road, a lot of cherry plum trees growing in a shelterbelt, and the plums were ripe and big. We walked to the shelterbelt. But it wasn't cherry plum there at all, it was crab apples.
We did find cherry plums a little further on, though. Big, ripe, bright yellow. We picked loads of them. We barely managed to carry them home, but what can you do: our family is big and everyone wants jam. A few of the cherry plums went into a spicy tkemali sauce.
Tkemali is a small, sour wild plum that grows in the Caucasus. Since tkemali is rare where we live, wild cherry plum makes a perfect substitute. The shade of tkemali sauce depends on the colour of the plums.
So: summer is the season for tkemali and cherry plums, and the time to make tkemali sauce and ordinary plum sauce for the winter. Georgian tkemali is easy to make and goes with fish, meat, poultry and side dishes, though you can also just spread it on bread and eat it like that. That's exactly what I do, for one.
The tkemali plum grows in the Caucasus, in the Balkans and probably almost everywhere in Europe. Oddly enough, the shop-bought tkemali sauce that plenty of brands sell tastes more like apple purée.
Meanwhile, tkemali is easy to make and, if done right, keeps for a very long time. The base of the sauce is tkemali or cherry plum. Wild is better, but cultivated garden plums will do too. Cultivated ones are softer and less sour. Cherry plum is Prunus cerasifera, and tkemali (Prunus divaricata, also classed as Prunus cerasifera) is the spreading plum, one of the ancestors of the common garden plum.
Ingredients
4-5 small jars
- Cherry plums (tkemali) 1 kg
- Garlic 1 head
- Salt 2 tsp
- Sugar 3 tsp
- Coriander seeds 1 tsp
- Hot chili pepper 0.5-1
- Dill 0.5 bunch
- Cilantro 0.5 bunch
- Mint 0.5 bunch
- Imeretian saffron 1 tsp
Step-by-step recipe
- Mint: Traditionally they use ombalo (Mentha pulegium), pennyroyal. But where to get it here, I have little idea. Ordinary fresh mint is sold in shops, though, and that's what I use. In principle you can use dried mint as well.
- Put 1 kg of cherry plums (tkemali) into a suitable pot, add water to cover the plums and set over the heat. Be warned: when it comes to the boil there will be a lot of foam, so keep an eye on it and stir. Cook the plums. If the sauce is going to be eaten straight away, cook them briefly, a couple of minutes, or even just bring to the boil. If you're making it to store for the winter, cook for 15-20 minutes.
- In that time the plums will cook through and the stones will come away easily. Rub the purée through a sieve to remove the stones. I don't throw away the skins. They cook down well, give the right sourness and are invisible in the sauce.
- Rubbing them through a sieve in this form is practically impossible, so pick out the stones by hand once cooled. Don't pour away the liquid left after cooking.
- Peel the garlic and put it in a blender, or chop it very finely, or even pound it in a mortar. But a blender is easier. Add salt, coriander, all the herbs, the seeded chili pepper and sugar. If the plums are overripe and not very sour, you can add 1 tsp of wine vinegar.
- Many people add a walnut dressing. But that's optional. Pound a cup of walnut kernels in a mortar with salt, garlic and pepper until the oil separates, pour off the oil and add the nuts to the sauce. But I don't do that.
- Blitz everything very finely. You should get a mush.
- Add the plums. Blitz again.
- Now pour everything into a pot and thin it a little with the liquid left from cooking the plums. It should be the consistency of sour cream.
- Put the tkemali sauce on the heat. Bring to the boil. Over very low heat, stirring constantly, simmer for 10 minutes. Then spoon the tkemali into sterilized jars and close with lids. Let cool and put in the fridge. Jars from shop-bought sauces with screw-on lids are ideal.
- If you're making tkemali sauce for the winter, cook it longer. Fill the jars right to the top. Seal with lids. In the Caucasus the sauce is made a little runny, poured into bottles, topped with a few drops of vegetable oil and sealed with corks, which are then coated with pitch.
- Here, everything is much simpler. Tkemali sauce is incredibly tasty. It never lasts until winter. It gets eaten much sooner. Just spread it on a couple of slices of bread and add a glass of tomato juice.
- Although I do manage to hide a little away for making kharcho soup.
| Yield: | 4-5 small jars |
| Calories: | 50 |
| Prep: | 30 mins |
| Cooking: | 60 mins |
| Ready in: | 1 h 30 mins |
| Category: | Snacks and Sauces |
| Cuisine: | Caucasian cuisine |
| Rating: |
⭐
⭐
⭐
⭐
⭐
5
(8)
|