If you have never had Romesco Sauce you are in for a real treat. I tastes amazing and can be served with so many things in so many ways. Here I will provide the sauce recipe and some suggestions with more in depth recipes to come.

Romesco Sauce: The heart of Romesco Sauce is roasted red peppers, you can roast your own peppers however life is busy and I prefer to use roasted red peppers from a jar that have been lightly pickled. I have a particular brand I use when I can get it which is Cooks&Co Roasted Red Peppers (you will see in photo below) I am sure there are other great ones out there but the key wording here is roasted, which brings out the sweetness. Everyone has different taste so just taste it as you are making it and adjust. I like it to have a vinegary bite which is usually calmed by what you are serving it with.

Start with:

1 whole bulb of garlic roasted – slice the top off of your bulb put in a small oven proof tray and pour a good glug of olive oil all over it making sure it soaks into the top, roast at 180-200 (fan oven) for about 10-15 min. You want it to be a little soft to squeeze and nicely browned. Let it cool before peeling back the skin and taking out the soft buttery cloves. If you like garlic mayo use this to blend into some store bought mayo for a mind blowing mayo experience!

     

Next: I had 3 large peppers left in my jar so that is what I used for this recipe, put the ingredients below into a food processor

3 large roasted red peppers chopped (if you are going to roast your own, put skin side up under grill till blackened, place in bowl with cling film while hot to help loosen skin, then peel the skins off. You may want to add some extra vinegar to the recipe since they have not been pickled, just add I extra tablespoon at a time tasting each time)

2 tablespoons of juice from the jar (this stuff is great don’t throw it away, get your money’s worth)

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

2/3 cup of ground almond

1 heaped teaspoon of smoked paprika

good pinch of salt and a few grinds of pepper (add more after you have whizzed it up if you think it needs it)

With all of this in the food processor switch it on and slowly add 2 tablespoons of olive oil

Taste and adjust

 

 

This sauce is delicious with seafood in general especially when grilled, over pasta (tastes great cold the next day too), with asparagus fries (recipe coming soon), as a dip or just on the table with a roast chicken dinner and grilled summer vegetables.

Really the list goes on, I never worry about making too much because you will always find something to have it with. On the day that I photographed this sauce being made I had some green beans that needed using up and really fancied some potatoes so I made a big warm salad which I will give a quick description of here.

Warm Salad made with Romesco Sauce

After roasting the garlic bulb I added 1 white onion cut into 6 wedges (in hindsight I should have done 2 onions) and but them in the same pan with a little more oil (any oil) and after then were softening I added some rosemary leaves stripped from the stem.

I boiled whole potatoes (I used some red skin but something waxy would have been better) when they are cooked let then steam off a bit and then slice and lay into a big flat serving dish while still hot and pour over olive oil (I had also reduced the rest of the liquid from the jar of peppers and poured this over too but you can just use olive oil) I first had this style of potato in Spain and you want to use a good tasty olive oil to create delicious buttery potatoes (watch out for the bitter oils no good for this)

I steamed the green beans then sliced them a little smaller and mixed with the onion and rosemary then scattered on the potato and topped with the Romesco Sauce and some hot smoked salmon that I had broken up with a fork.

 

 

We then had some spinach leaves with this warm salad and those leaves could have been put below the potato but I hadn’t thought of that yet!

I always like to have a vegetarian version of a dish and this one you could serve the salmon separately and as an alternative you could also have some black olives and or feta in a bowl for a veggie to add to their dish. I think this is the way forward for creating things everyone can eat, I guess some people call it deconstructed but that is a little fancy for my liking.

So time to get busy experimenting with all the wonderful things you can eat with this sauce!!