Romesco Sauce Recipe
Although Romesco sauce is known or generalized as a Spanish recipe, it is more specifically a sauce recipe belonging to Catalan cuisine. It is served with a kind of fresh onion called Çalçot, which is especially made in March and eaten after roasting them in a flaming fire. It is a tomato, garlic and nora pepper based sauce. Almond or a mixture of almonds and hazelnuts is used as a thickener. The thing that gives its real aroma is the Spanish style smoked paprika.
There is only one ingredient in the recipe that is not possible to find in other countries than Spain; nora peppers. You can actually find nora peppers. Round red peppers, which are sold as kamber peppers in Turkey and red round hungarian peppers are called nora peppers in Spain. However, dried nora peppers are used in the recipe. As far as I know, dried kamber peppers are not sold everywhere in Turkey. But if you have dried kamber peppers or red round hungarian peppers at home, you're in luck. Otherwise, you can use any dry red peppers.
There is also an ingredient that you may not know or find; smoked paprika. As I said at the beginning it is the thing that gives its real aroma, so I recommend that you do not look for alternatives because it is the main flavoring of the recipe. Smoked paprika is also the flavoring of the pulpo de gallega recipe.
While preparing the Romesco sauce recipe, I made two choices. Bread is also used in some recipes, but in this case it becomes a slightly thicker sauce. I didn't use bread because I don't like this very thick consistency and because it's gluten-free. But if you want it to be thicker, you can add a slice of white bread. My second choice was for almonds. In some recipes, almonds and hazelnuts are used half and half. Since hazelnuts are a more fragrant nut than almonds, I did not use it because of the concern that its smell could be felt. Because according to me the taste and smell of hazelnut is not something that should be in the recipe. But if you think you will like it, you can use 50 g of almonds + 50 g of hazelnuts.
If you want your sauce to be slightly spicy, you can use hot smoked pepper.
Enjoy the recipe...
Ingredients
- 3 (600 g) tomatoes,
- 1 head of garlic,
- 3 dried nora peppers,
- 1/2 cup of olive oil,
- 5 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar,
- 100 g of roasted almonds,
- 1 teaspoon of salt,
- 1 teaspoon of smoked hot or sweet paprika.
Preparation
- Take the dried nora peppers into a bowl, add boiling water and wait until they soften,
- In the meantime, place the tomatoes and garlic in a baking dish and cook them in a preheated oven at 190 degrees until they soften,
- Remove the seeds of the peppers and separate the fleshy parts from their shells with a knife,
- Peel the skins of the tomatoes and garlic,
- Take pepper, tomato, garlic, almond, olive oil, vinegar, salt and paprika in a vertical blender or food processor and grind until you reach a smooth consistency,
- Divide it into jars,
- If you want to store them for a long time, boil the jars in a pressure cooker for 3-5 minutes.
Enjoy it...