Turkish Salce – a handy tomato sauce

turkish-salce-picture

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.

salce-ingredients

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.

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