A couple of years ago, I had one of the most interesting travel experiences of my life, up there with Tibet in my top travel rankings. Georgia, the country not the region, is unspoiled, cheap, different and has an amazing food and drink culture. If like me, you love sour flavours, they use unripe green plums to make a green sauce called tkemali and red ripe plums for a red version. It’s like an acidic and sophisticated version of ketchup, beloved by Russians as well as Georgians. I used unripe yellow plums from South Africa to make this sauce to accompany roast cod. In Georgia they use it for potatoes or meat.
In terms of ingredients, the only difficulty is finding the herb Pennyroyal, the nearest equivalent being mint or spearmint. You also use Summer or Winter Savory, a bit like a peppery Marjoram, which we have grown at the Secret Garden Club with success. But I made this sauce without these herbs and it tasted similar to what I enjoyed in Georgia.
1 kilo of unripe plums ( yellow or green), blanched, skins removed
Interesting, the middle eastern grocer near my house sells green plums and I've been wondering what to use them for.
Have a go, I know it's counter intuitive to use plums as a savoury, but they do have this marvellous sourness which works well
Looks lovely, and a good way to use up unripe plums. Just don't eat pennyroyal if you're pregnant!
Really? Is it like raspberry?
What does that even mean?
Off to Georgia on Thursday – inspired by your original posts (taken me a while to get there). I will be tucking some bottles of plum sauce into my suitcase.
Ms Kerstin, it's nice you like Georgian tkemali. Salut from Georgia. Alex
Pennyroyal is traditionally used to induce abortion (European herbal tradition.)
A musical tidbit: Lyrics from Nirvana’s ’93 album ‘In Untero’: “Sit and drink Pennyroyal tea; distill the life that’s inside of me . . .”
I live in Hong Kong, and the local markets are now full of Ume plums, the very hard, green plums that are used to make the Japanese pickled plums Umeboshi. I may give this recipe a try with those 🙂
Oops – In Utero, not Untero (－‸ლ)
Oops – In Utero, not Untero (－‸ლ)