Persia and the Caucasus · Volume 60, The Palaw, the Dumpling and the Winter Meat · Cooked by cue
Ghulor tursh
Herat
Illustration
- Researched
- Researched from 55 sources in the brief
Ghulor tursh is a sour tomato soup made from granules: a dough of tomato, flour and spice dried in the sun for two or three days, crumbled, and cooked with fried onion and garlic. Mohammad Husain Nikkhah, writing in Hasht-e Subh in December 2019, says it is Herat's alone and that the poet Khalilullah Khalili wrote of it; the uniqueness is his claim, and we leave it his. It is made by cue, and the cue is the sun.
As tradition built it
Two or three days in the sun to make the granules. Serves a table.
Ingredients
Ghulor tursh is made by cue, the sun doing the work over two or three days; the one Herati writer who describes it gives no weights, and the method is his.
- ripe tomatoes, cooked down thick
- flour, enough to make a dough with the tomato
- spice and salt
- onion, fried
- garlic, heated in fat
- water, boiling
Method
- Work the ripe tomatoes, cooked down thick, with flour, spice and salt into a dough.
- Shape it into small pieces and set them in direct sun for two or three days, until they are dry through.
- Crumble the dried pieces to fine granules. They keep.
- To cook, drop the granules into boiling water with the fried onion and the heated garlic and simmer until it is a thick, sour soup.
What a modern chef changes
The sun replaced, honestly, by the dehydrator
Rung 4
Method
- Dry the shaped dough in a dehydrator at 45 degrees Celsius for 24 to 36 hours, turning once, until it snaps; the sun is the tradition and the machine is the substitute.
- Grind the dried pieces in the spice grinder to an even grain, which dissolves evenly in the pot.
- Fry the onion slowly to a deep brown before it meets the water; it is the soup's only sweetness against the sour.
- Finish with a spoon of chakah on each bowl.