Walnut Sauces: Georgia's Foundational Fat

Where France uses butter, Italy uses olive oil, and Southeast Asia uses coconut, Georgia uses walnut. The walnut is the foundational fat and flavour carrier of Georgian cuisine — ground into paste, it forms the base of satsivi (cold walnut sauce for poultry), badrijani nigvzit (fried eggplant rolls with walnut-garlic paste), pkhali (vegetable-walnut patties), and kharcho (beef-and-walnut soup). Georgia's climate is ideal for walnut cultivation, and the trees grow wild across the country.

• Turkish tarator (walnut-garlic sauce — the Anatolian cousin), Levantine muhammara (walnut-red pepper paste — same walnut-as-foundation principle), Mexican pipián (pumpkin seed sauce — nut/seed as sauc