Starter Fasting
Makalo
A thick garlic and dried pepper sauce for dipping bread — what went with the grill in every old tavern.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 10 min
- Total
- 25 min
- Fasting
- Suitable
Ingredients 7 ingredients
Method
- Soak the dried peppers in warm water for 20 minutes until soft, then drain them and take out the seeds. Keep a little of the water.
- Crush the garlic with coarse salt in a mortar until you have a smooth paste. The salt here is not only seasoning — it is the abrasive that breaks the garlic down.
- Add the softened peppers and go on pounding until everything comes together. If you want a thicker makalo, work in the boiled potato now.
- Pour in the oil in a thin stream, stirring without stopping, as though making mayonnaise. Tip it in all at once and the sauce splits.
- Stir in the vinegar and paprika, and let it down with a little of the pepper soaking water if it is too thick.
- Leave it to stand for half an hour before serving. Eaten with bread, with grilled meat, or with boiled potatoes.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Dried red peppers
- Spanish ñora, or two teaspoons of sweet paprika with a roasted fresh pepper.
- Mortar and pestle
- A processor on short pulses; the texture differs, but it works.
- Boiled potato
- A piece of crustless bread soaked and squeezed out — the older way of doing it.
