Walnut-Yogurt Sauce: The Missing Link?
Combining walnuts and yogurt, as Anne Mendelson suggests is common in Eurasia. It was new to me. Or so I thought.
Of course, as Anne explains, “dairy animals and yogurt-making historically flourished in many of the Old World regions where walnut trees grew–Greece, the Caucasus, the Vale of Kashmir.”
So a couple of days ago, I stirred some walnuts pulverized in my molcajete into some of the yogurt I make each week. Anne’s Indian recipe included chile and spices but I wanted to get a sense of the most basic sauce.
Good the first day, it was spectacular the second when the flavors had had a chance to meld. Spooned over cooked and slightly vinegared slices of beetroot it was one-more-mouthful delicious, something I don´t normally say about beetroot.
But ah-ha. Doesn’t this seem familiar? The wheels start turning. Ah-ha again. This is chiles en nogada. Chiles en nogada is one of the iconic dishes in Mexico, a specific kind of chile, stuffed with a spicy, meaty, fruity filling, and covered with a sauce made by combining ground walnuts with crema (cultured cream). Here’s a glowing photo of chiles en nogada from Mexico Cooks.
OK. I know there are a zillion versions of chiles en nogada but the above seems to me to be the core dish. And since neither dairy products nor walnuts were indigenous to Mexico, this sauce has to be an Old World commonplace transported to the New World.
And the nogada sauce for chiles has to be one of the most refined and delicate versions of the family of cultured milk-walnut sauces. Only new young walnuts, shell removed and inner covering carefully peeled off. Nothing to beat these. And gently cultured, creamy crema.
Walnuts are pretty widely distributed and the Mexican Walnut is “Juglans mollis”, there are also a few other species native found in Mexico as well, apart from the Old World introductions. No idea if these were even used as a food source. Actually, apart from maize and squash seeds, is there any other pre-Columbian seed/grain/nut used to thinken sauces?
I haven’t tried walnut with yoghurt, but one of the nicest ways of eating buckwheat blini and smoked salmon is with a sour creme and walnut sauce with beetroot.
I had a quick look at some early 19th century descriptions of nogada. Some recipes seem to lack dairy (described as walnuts, bread, garlic, salt, oil). Interestingly one castellana language dictionary gives a definition in catalan “picarda o salsa de nous”. It is given as a sauce for fish.
The Ruperto de Nola’s “Libre del Coch”gives several fish recipe that have a walnut (plus other nuts) thickened sauce. These recipes look like a picada, so I can see how the description above was applied.
The yogurt I make is very mild, almost like a crema, simply because that’s what happens if I put together the one active yogurt culture I can find here (well, semi-active) and full milk powder. Good though. I’ll add the sour-cream and walnut sauce to my smoked salmon repertoire.
In Mexico, there’s a sharp distinction made between nuez pacana (pecan) and nuez de castilla (walnut). The former is native to Mexico and is sometimes criollo, just like people born in Mexico but of Spanish ancestry. The nogada sauce is never made with pecans. These turn up in chile-based sauces, at least to judge by the cooking of my neighbors.
Nuez de castilla (Castilian nut), sometimes called nuez de nogal (nut of the walnut tree) is at least in high end cooking invariably the nut used for chiles en nogada. It must be young and it must be peeled (which you can only do when it is young, anyway) to make this sauce. I realize according to Ricardo Muñoz that these are ground with water or milk or fresh cheese not crema.
As to the fish recipes, here’s an interesting quote from the Nuevo Cocinero Mexicano (1888). “It is said that walnuts (nueces but defined as del nogal) taken after fish, speed up its digestion.”
The same source says that old walnuts are terrible for digestion and should be preserved with aguadiente or sugar while still young.
Pecans are a different genus to walnuts, the native walnuts are the same genus as the Eurasian type used to make nogada. Some of the new world walnuts are edible, although I have no idea about the Mexican versions.
Diego Granado in “Libro del arte de cocina” apparently mentions nogada as a sauce for stuffed cabbage. How related is this to the stuffed chillie version?
Adam, you’re quite right about pecans and walnuts. Thanks. The fact is that in Mexico walnuts, whether or not there are walnuts native to Mexico, in the Mexican mind walnuts are clearly associated with Spain, pecans with Mexico.
Oh, and about Diego Granada, that’s really interesting. I’ll have to think about this.