Bazhe Walnut Sauce

If made to name a favorite world cuisine the Gargoyle would unhesitatingly declare Japanese and gush about its amazing varieties, many of which are approximately impossible to sample in even a well-restauranted suburbia of even a culinarily-inclined major city.

But if made to name two cuisines, the second would surely be the food of Georgia the country. Not that this is easy to obtain even by braving the traffic of too many major cities, but if you are so fortunate as to have a nearby example, do not miss the opportunity to sample an appetizer of chicken satsivi: pieces of chicken drowning in a decadent light walnut sauce. By all accounts a proper satsivi is notoriously fussy and multi-stepped, and someone's grandma will haunt you if you get it wrong, so the Gargoyle was never tempted to try this at home.

Which brings us to a musical break for piano fans to introduce Levon Oganezov: a musician, arranger, accompanist and storyteller who among other things shares entertaining (if often hard to translate) musical parodies and Stupid Piano Tricks. Such as this YouTube video wherein he demonstrates (in Russian) stylings of a ballet fan, how to handle rapid scales and arpeggios if you haven't practiced in a while, and what if you would rather be playing the balalaika. Every few years the Gargoyle gets on a kick of checking out what content he's posted lately.

This round yielded an interview where among multitudes of fascinating, insightful commentary on history of music he mentioned growing up in Georgia and as a child with his sister making a sauce that's kind of like satsivi but a whole lot easier and haunting-free.

Aha, said the Gargoyle and went a-googlin'.

The most trustworthy of sources included two ingredients which were not to be had on hand.

One was the spice blend khmeli-suneli , which can be found in Russian ethnic stores or online, and which includes coriander, marjoram, saffron, basil, dill, half-dozen other spices one may or may not have on hand and - alas for the Gargoyle - chili peppers. Regrettably gargoyles do not do well at all with capsaicin even in tiny quantities, which has a habit of coming around as a problem in most commercial spice blends.

Some recipes omitted it or replaced it with smaller ingredient subsets. But most recipes insisted on the essentialness of utsho-suneli, which turned out to be the seeds of fenugreek. This was also not on hand, but perhaps could be obtained? A local Indian grocery carried leaves of same, and it was not until half of the ingredients were mixed did the Gargoyle realize having missed that particular distinction.

Any recipe that claimed to do without fenugreek was summarily dismissed from consideration lest the spirits of grandmas be encouraged to expand their haunting turf. Others were observed to vary the ratios and orders of adding things - some introduced water early, others as last step, some pre-mixed spices, others dumped them right in, and so forth. Garlic was chopped or minced or crushed or replaced with garlic powder (but don't do that if you can help it.)

If you have fenugreek seeds, do remember to pre-cook them, one hears they're bitter otherwise.

The recipes did not assume ground walnuts, but that's a shelf staple in this household. Recommendations varied from mortar and pestle to food processor to blender to pulverize and combine the ingredients.

This led to the discovery of this handy-dandy tool for converting walnut quantities between halved, crushed, ground and more. From a site about brick ovens. Which also has a tool for converting quantities of some other foods, lurking unintuitively in the right link bar if you scroll down the page "flour converter". Living in the future is amazing, because there are people who are lousy at web design who purvey awesome if badly catalogued trivia.

It's 1 cup crushed to 1.25 cups ground, by the way, since all other ingredients were so variable and approximate, a cup seemed as good a quantity as any for the first attempt.

Bazhe Sauce

I don't think it was supposed to be green.

• Walnuts, pre-ground, 1 cup

• Garlic, 2-4 cloves, smallified. (That's a word now).

• Fenugreek, 1 tsp

• Cilantro, 1 tsp if frozen

• saffron, pre-ground, probably fake, 1 tsp

• khmeli suneli, none but shoulda been 1 tsp

• coriander, none, but shoulda been 1 tsp to replace the non-existing khmeli suneli

• lemon juice or white wine vinegar, 1 tsp

• water, 1-ish cup.

• pepper, salt to taste

1. Put walnuts in a bowl.

2. Pour in the water 1/4 to 1/3 cup at a time, stirring. The goal is to get to about the consistency of sour cream, but one is allowed more or less liquid to taste.

3. Chop or mince or garlic-press-crush garlic. Add, stir.

4. Add the other spices, stir

5. Add the lemon juice or vinegar, stir

6. Salt and pepper. To taste. Stir.

7. Refrigerating it for an hour or two before serving is fine. But if something comes up and you don't actually cook whatever you're putting it onto until the next day, after taking out of the fridge, stir: the darn thing separates.

Serve in a pretty bowl to spoon over chicken. Or fish. Or eggplant, or cauliflower, or allegedly even hard-boiled eggs.

Tastefully garnish with pomegranate seeds before posting on Instagram.

Verdict:

Since it's more or less impossible to combine these ingredients in a reasonable proportion and make it not taste good, the result was entirely all right, but obviously not as expected. Spouse thought it was undersalted and could have used the extra spice it was modified to remove. The Gargoyle enjoyed it, and will someday try again with the correct fenugreek.

Now to find what else to make with Too Much Fenugreek that is now owned.

A non-instagram-worthy chicken

Bonus content: if one air-fries the chicken in this sauce as if it was a breading, it is not very impressive. It's not any worse for it, but neither is it worth it. This message is brought to you by Spouse finding the sauce in the fridge and making an assumption. Here's hoping the ghosts of Georgian grandmas forgive the innovation.