By Carmel Karni — See the recipe
Harissa
This vegan sauce will elevate almost any meal. I think people started referring to me as a good cook after I started making this sauce for dinner parties. You can use it to enliven eggs, grilled veggies or meat, as a base for a quick shakshuka, grain salads… the list goes on. This sauce is easy to make, but take into account that you need two hours to soak the dried peppers. Traditionally it is made in a meat grinder, but I always make it in a food processor, Just use the pulse button. You do not want a completely smooth sauce.
Harissa
Ingredients
- 1 bag (roughly 75 grams) california dried peppers
- 8 cloves of garlic, peeled
- 1 ½ TSP ground cumin
- ⅓ cup olive oil
- ⅓ cup neutral oil (grapeseed, vegetable, corn etc)
- 50 ML lemon juice
- About 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon to 3 teaspoon cayenne pepper (depending on how spicy you want it to be)
Wash and clean the dried peppers: Use kitchen shears, cut the tops off of the peppers, cut them open, clean them from seeds and wash under running water. Put cleaned peppers in a bowl, cover with room temperature water and let them soak for two hours.
Mix the oils, lemon, cumin, salt and cayenne together in a large bowl. Set aside.
After two hours, squeeze the peppers lightly between your hands and transfer to the bowl of the food processor. Add the garlic and pulse, cleaning the sides of the bowl every once in a while, until the peppers and garlic are finely chopped. Pour about ⅓ cup of the liquids into the food processor and continue pulsing until the mixture looks finely chopped but not completely smooth.
Add the food processor content to the bowl with the rest of the oil mixture and mix to combine. Taste and add cayenne and salt to taste.
The sauce will keep in the refrigerator for about three weeks.
