Canarian · Sauce · From the menu The basics

Mojo verde

Green mojo with coriander and green chilli

The green sauce that goes on almost everything in the Canaries. Coriander, garlic and cumin, sharpened with vinegar and loosened with olive oil. Weighed properly, because a bunch of coriander can mean anything from 30 to 50 grams and that is the difference between two very different sauces.

Serves
About 300 ml, enough for six
Prep
15 min
Cuisine
Canarian

Every island kitchen has a version and no two agree. I cross-checked five published Canarian recipes to settle the proportions: they differ on almost everything, but all five use cumin, all five keep the garlic raw and none of them cooks anything. Where they disagreed most was the acid, which ranged over four and a half times between the highest and lowest. I have landed at one part vinegar to five of oil.

Ingredients

  • 50 g coriander, leaves and tender stems, weighed after picking
  • 5 cloves garlic, about 25 g, peeled
  • 1 tsp ground cumin, about 2 g
  • 4 g fine salt, plus more to finish
  • 40 ml white wine vinegar
  • 200 ml extra virgin olive oil
  • 1 small green chilli, optional

Method

  1. Wash the coriander well and pick the leaves and the tender stems. Weigh them. A bunch is not a measurement: one published recipe defines its own bunch as anywhere between 30 and 50 grams, and that alone will give you two different sauces.
  2. Work the garlic, cumin and salt to a rough paste in a mortar. This is the one thing the mortar does better than the machine, and it is the only way to be certain no raw garlic survives whole.
  3. Add the coriander, and the chilli if you are using it, and work it down.
  4. Loosen with the vinegar.
  5. Pour the oil in slowly while the blender runs, rather than all at once. It will not emulsify like a mayonnaise and it is not meant to.
  6. Taste, and correct the salt. Three of the five recipes I checked refuse to give a salt quantity at all and just say to taste, which tells you where this sauce is actually finished.
  7. Cover and refrigerate. It is better after a night in the fridge.

Serve it with. Cherne, vieja, papas arrugadas, or anything off the grill.

Cook it with

Stone bass, green mojo, heritage potato Cherne, mojo verde, papa antigua Papas arrugadas Salt-wrinkled Canarian potatoes