Having salce (saljeh) on hand sure makes cooking Turkish easy. Keep a container in the freezer and just take out a spoonful as needed. Salce is used in recipes coming soon to this blog: dolma (green peppers stuffed with rice, parsley and salce), Turkish French fries (salce is so much better than ketchup!), mercimek (lentil soup), and easy chickpeas. Salce is full of cancer-fighting lycopene. It’s used a spice paste, so it’s very salty and spicy.
Most families I knew in Turkey dried their tomatoes in the sun on the roof of the house. But, we will use tomato paste.
You need: 1 small can tomato paste
1 teaspoon fresh chili sauce (or more) You can substitute with the chili you usually cook with- chili powder, blatt paprika or fresh green chili- adjust the amount but make it very hot.
1 teaspoon salt
Mint (optional) 2 teaspoons dried or 1/2 cup chopped fresh.
1- Heat: 2-3 Tablespoons olive oil in a pan (Tomato really picks up iron in a cast iron pan)
2- “Kill” the tomato paste by adding it to the hot oil and stir to mix.
3- Add chili and salt. When the tomato has absorbed most or all of the oil, add the mint.
It should taste very salty and spicy-hot.
