Romesco Sauce

Suitable for vegans and vegetarians

Ingredients:

• 1 cup almonds, 
• 3 red bell peppers, 
• 1 cup lightly toasted breadcrumbs, 
• 1 lemon, 
• 2 cloves of garlic, 
• 1/2 tsp red chilli flakes, 
• 2 tsp smoked paprika, 
• 1/2 cup olive oil.

The first step of making this sauce is preparing the peppers. Most of the flavour and colour of the sauce will come from the roasted red peppers and you have a few options when it comes to roasting them. The quickest and easiest option is to buy a jar of roasted peppers and simply using those. Alternatively you could oven roast them (200 degrees celsius for 30-35 minutes or until soft). But I would recommend roasting them on an open flame. It requires a little more care and caution, but it produces a rich, smokey flavour that is absolutely with the effort.

Method (peppers):

• Place the peppers directly onto an open flame, ideally a gas stove top on a medium heat.
• Leave the peppers on the flame until they develop a dark black char on their skin. Rotate each one so that the whole outside of the pepper is black and charred.
• Continue cooking on the flame until the peppers are soft and emit some steam when you squeeze or poke them.
• Remove from the flame and wrap immediately with aluminium foil.
• Leave the peppers to cool for 40 minutes to an hour. They will continue to cook and break down in this time.
• Once cool enough to handle, unwrap the peppers and remove the seeds and black charred skin. This is most easily done by cutting them in half, scraping the seeds from the inside, and scraping the charred skin from the outside using a knife. Rinse off any remaining bits of skin with cold water.

Method (sauce):

• Lightly toast the almonds in a pan over medium-high heat for 7-10 minutes or until they are fragrant and brittle.
• Add almonds to a blender or food processor and pulse until you achieve a consistency just shy of your desired consistency. You will be blending them again when you add the rest of the ingredients so leave them slightly chunkier at this point than you'd like.
• Add the zest and juice of the lemon. Traditionally, this sauce gets its acidity from sherry vinegar but using lemon juice makes for a slightly fresher tasting sauce. (Also who has sherry vinegar?)
• Add the peppers. breadcrumbs, garlic, chilli flakes, and paprika and begin to blend.
• As you are blending, slowly stream in the olive oil.
• Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add more oil if the mixture looks too dry.

This is an incredibly versatile sauce. It can be subbed in for pesto in a pasta dish or enjoyed on its own spread on toast with a little bit of parsley. To store, cover with cling film touching the surface of the sauce and refrigerate.