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Recipes with purple or green basil

3 recipes that use purple or green basil, with photos, step-by-step instructions and cook times. The quickest, Georgian salad with walnut dressing, takes 15 minutes. It is most often cooked with ripe tomato, coriander leaves and garlic.

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Georgian salad with walnut dressing

On a Georgian table in July and August the tomato and cucumber salad is not dressed with oil and lemon but with ground walnuts loosened with water and vinegar, so the dressing turns creamy and nutty. You find it in Tbilisi kitchens, in Kakhetian village gardens where the tomatoes come off the vine warm, and next to every khachapuri. It takes fifteen minutes and is best eaten as soon as it is made. A common mistake is salting the tomatoes too early, which floods the bowl with juice and thins the dressing; dress and salt just before it goes to the table. Chef's tip: use purple (opal) basil if you can find it; its clove-like scent is what makes this salad taste Georgian.

15 minSaladsVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Ajapsandali

Ajapsandali is what Georgian kitchens make in late summer, when the markets of Tbilisi and the gardens of Kakheti are heaped with aubergines, peppers and tomatoes. The vegetables are fried briefly, layered in a pot and left to stew gently until soft and sweet, then finished with a whole handful of coriander, basil and garlic. It is eaten warm with bread as a main dish during Lent, or cold the next day as a side at a feast. The common mistake is stirring it too often, which breaks everything into mush; shake the pan instead and let the layers keep their shape. Chef's tip: fry the aubergine on its own first until golden; this one step gives the whole stew its deep, rounded flavour.

65 minVegetarianVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Achichuk

Achichuk, which means 'sharp' in Uzbek, is the thin-sliced tomato and onion salad that sits beside every platter of plov from Bukhara to the Ferghana Valley. In summer Tashkent markets overflow with heavy, sweet tomatoes and this salad is little more than those tomatoes, rings of mild onion, a hot green chilli, salt and black pepper, with a fistful of basil (reyhan) or dill. Some families call it shakarob. It is meant to cut through the richness of rice cooked in oil, so it has no dressing beyond the juice the tomatoes give. Chef's tip: soak the onion in salted iced water for 10 minutes; it loses its harsh bite but stays crunchy, which is how Uzbek cooks get the onion so gentle.

15 minSaladsVeganGluten free
by KrazyBadal 0 views

Goes well with purple or green basil