Rooted Palate #1: Tkemali sauce with a Mexican flare

Introduction

If you go to a supermarket in Japan anytime in May, you will notice empty jars, rock sugar cubes, and mounds of green plums on the shelf. It is the springtime rally to make jars of either pickled plum, plum syrup, or plum wine. If you have been in Japan for as long as I have, you have done the rounds, of making all of them.. even experimenting with adding leftover spices to the mix to explore new flavors.

When looking for alternative uses of the plum as part of the ELAB deli sauce menu, the first hit that was not the conventional menu originating from Japan was the Tkemali sauce. Which is a traditional Georgian sauce made out of green Georgian plums, and Caucasian spices.

With limited ingredients in the pantry, and an acute understanding of flavor, we go to work… and this is the recipe that we conjured up.

Recipe

Cooking time

45minutes -1hour

Ingredients

• Japanese green plum
• Onions
• Epazote: A herb commonly used in Mexico/ Guatemala that has a strong flavor similar to that of oregano and fennel.
• Coriander
• Dill
• Salt
• Apple juice
• Garlic

Recipe

To get the Green plum pulp

• Clean and remove the stem of the plum
• Fill water in a deep pot.
• Add the cleaned plums to the pot
• Boil the contents for 20–30 minutes until soft
• Strain the water and sieve the boiled plum pulps in a colander.
• As the contents cool down, with your hands squeeze the pulp into a separate bowl. Make sure the seed is removed from the pulp before collecting it in a bowl
• Take the pulp and sieve it through the colander to get a finer pulp.

To make the sauce

• Over medium-low heat in a small saucepan heat 1 tablespoon of neutral oil until shimmering.
• Add 1 onion chopped into cubes and a generous pinch of salt and cook until softened and translucent but not browned for about 5 minutes.
• Reduce the heat to low and add garlic. Cook for another 30 seconds to 1 minute.
• Add the pulp in a clean pot to the saucepan and slowly stir in.
• Slowly simmer the sauce to get a thick consistency.
• Cut cilantro, epazote, and dill and add them to the saucepan for flavor as the sauce cools
• Adjust the flavor to your liking by adding some salt, sugar, or apple juice

How to eat it

As a Sauce

• Roast/ grill your vegetables and eat them with this sauce!

As a Mix for potato salad

• Mix the sauce with the potato salad for a tart upgrade!

As a Salad dressing

• Mix the sauce with olive oil to loosen it into a dressing-like sauce!
• Eat it with a version of the salad of your choice!

Rooted in…Experimentation

This Mexican/Japanese version of the Tkemali sauce is rooted in flavour, drawing from the seasonal tartness of the Green Japanese plum, the herbaceous and medicinal properties of Epasote, and the deep flavor of garlic and dill that ties us back to Georgian cuisine.

Conventionally, the Tkemali sauce calls for cumin, Fennel, and Pennyroyal which can only be commonly found in the Caucasian region of the world but does not naturally grow in Japan. That is why collaborating with Momo-sans deeply rooted understanding of flavours and ingredients helped us innovate a new way of including similar flavors using local and available ingredients.

That is where the Epasote comes in… Epasote is something that is not commonly found in Japan as well. However the partner farm that ELAB works with OME Farms had been experimenting with growing Epasote, diversifying their repertoire into Mexican, and South American ingredients as a result of a request that came from one of their located in Sangenjaya (Los Tacos Azules). When Ome Farms started making Epasote on their farms, it grew very well! Which then resulted in us getting to experiment with this ingredient in our recipe.

So what can we learn from this little journey into recipe development?

• The limitation of using only local ingredients can unlock diverse ways to use what we already have around us. We might not have Epasote accessible to us when we cook, but leaning into similar flavor palates with what we have readily available might allow us to discover new flavor pairings.
• As a result, this process resulted in us using epasote, and Tkemali, breaking all the conventional ‘rules’ of the ingredient. According to Momo-san, boiling plums was not a common way of processing plums in Japan. Pickling, or preserving it in syrup helps manage the tartness of the plum, but boiling it lets the tartness of the plum come through in the dishes.
• Unlocking the tartness by boiling the plums helped keep the tartness and flavor of the sauce for a long without spoiling. In fact, the batch I took home was left in my fridge for over 1 month and a half (she said sheepishly…). But when I took it out to make myself some potato salad, it tasted as fresh as I had initially made it. That was a learning we collectively received through this experiment.

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Ps: This was a recipe developed sometime in May of 2023. In other words, there were few photos that were taken around this process of making the recipe. Will keep this in mind for future innovation sessions!