Marmite has met its match with this love/hate sauce
by Metodej Novotny
image courtesy of poradte.cz
All my life, dill has been a sort of mystery to me. Its taste is so specific I can’t even think of what to compare it to – on the contrary, I sometimes use dill as a benchmark to compare something else to!
For instance, I can smell dill in a bottle of Tullamore Dew, but not in the glass. Mysterious...
Despite my passion for experimenting with spices I am at my wits end with this particular herb. I really only know dill from one particular recipe: dill sauce. Since I can remember, dill sauce has been a staple in my granddad’s cookbook and caused a great divide in the school canteens – half of the people loved it, the other half hated it. Just like marmite, with the only difference that dill sauce is actually edible and intended for oral consumption.
The taste of it is truly unique and if you’re unfamiliar with dill, it will be a worthy new experience for you. A spoonful of adventure. It is as easy as recipes go, but the real trick is balancing the taste with salt, sugar and vinegar just right. Yes, sugar and vinegar.
To feed two or one twice you’ll need:
0.5 litre of milk
1-2 tbsp of flour
Oil
Double or soured cream
Dill – fresh is better!
Salt, sugar, vinegar
Make roux by heating up some oil and then sprinkling the flour on it, mixing it together into thin paste and frying the mixture for 30 seconds while stirring. Let cool down to prevent lumps. Pour milk (to speed things up you can microwave it to be warmer when the roux is cooling down) into the mixture while stirring. Bring to boil and boil for a few minutes so the sauce starts thickening. When it’s almost thick enough, add a lot of dill for the last minute of the boil. Now a finishing touch – seasoning. Add sugar, vinegar and salt up top your taste (I would start with a 0.5 tbsp of sugar, 3 tsp of vinegar and some salt). Serve with potatoes, dumplings or even pasta if you like as a side and some meat or hard boiled egg.
