Mojo Verde, Canarian Green Cilantro Sauce
Mojo is the table sauce of the Canary Islands, served green (verde) with a base of cilantro or red (rojo, or picon) with dried chile and paprika. It rides on top of papas arrugadas, the salt-wrinkled little potatoes of the islands, and on almost anything else that needs waking up. The classic version is loosened with a good amount of oil, but the sauce is really carried by garlic, cumin, and vinegar, so a boiled potato blended in does the thickening job instead and lets the herb flavor come forward. Toast the cumin yourself, use the tender cilantro stems as well as the leaves, and lean on the vinegar rather than salt to sharpen it. It keeps for the better part of a week and gets rounder as it sits.
Ingredients
- 2 cups Cilantro, leaves and tender stems, packed
- 3 cloves Garlic
- 1 whole Bell peppers, green, seeded and chopped
- 1 small Potatoes, peeled, boiled soft
- 1 tsp Cumin seed, toasted
- 2 tbsp White wine vinegar
- 1/4 tsp Black peppercorns, ground
Method
- Toast the cumin seed in a dry pan until it smells nutty and just begins to smoke, about 1 minute, then grind it. Whole seed toasted at the last minute carries far more aroma than pre-ground cumin that has sat in a jar, and cumin is half of what makes mojo taste like mojo.
- Boil the peeled potato until a knife slides through, then let it cool a little. This is the trick that replaces the oil: a soft potato blends into the sauce and gives it the clingy body that oil usually provides, with none of the fat.
- Put the cilantro, garlic, green pepper, cumin, vinegar, black pepper, and the potato in a blender with 1/4 cup water (60 ml). Blend to a coarse green sauce, adding water a spoonful at a time until it pours slowly off the spoon. Green pepper, not chile, is what keeps this the mild verde; the heat version, rojo, swaps in dried chile.
- Taste and adjust with vinegar, not salt. Mojo should read bright and garlicky, and the acid is what makes it land without the salt a Canarian cook would add. Loosen with more water if it thickens as it sits.
- Spoon over boiled potatoes, roasted vegetables, or beans. Keep it in a jar in the fridge, where the garlic mellows and the flavors marry over a day.
Nutrition
Estimated per serving: 30 calories, 1 g protein, 1 g fiber, 10 mg sodium. Computed from USDA FoodData Central reference values for the main ingredients. This is an approximation, not a laboratory measurement. How these are computed.
Cost per serving is estimated from US national-average retail prices for cheap staple forms, using BLS dried-bean prices and USDA produce prices. Prices vary by store and season, so treat it as a guide, not a receipt. How this is computed.
