Salad dressings & dips
Smoked Harissa
Enjoy a fiery sauce made with blistered peppers and lightly smoked chillies.
This recipe for Smoked Harrissa comes from the Field kitchen fire cookery demo, where guests learn how to create flavoursome, fire-cooked dishes with fresh veg picked from the Riverford Farm and our kitchen garden. BBQs aren’t only the home of steaks and sausages; fresh veg can be just as happy above or within a pile of glowing embers. When you cook veg over fire flavours intensify, surfaces caramelise and edges get irresistibly crisp and charred.
Ingredients
- 15 red chillies
- 1 Romano or red pepper
- 1 heaped tbsp cumin seeds
- 1 heaped tbsp carraway seeds
- 3 lemons, juiced
- 300ml olive oil
- salt to season
Method
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Step 1
Halve and deseed the chillies. Place on a wire rack high above the BBQ or above a cool spot of your fire.
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Step 2
Throw your red pepper into the embers until blackened and collapsing, Place in a bowl and cover to allow the peppers to steam so the skins are easy to remove. Once they are cool enough to handle, skin and deseed the peppers.
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Step 3
Toast and grind the spices (a small inexpensive spice grinder would be helpful for this recipe as well as having this equipment for various other household kitchen jobs).
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Step 4
Once the chillies begin to dry (but absolutely not dried), place them on a chopping board and with a sharp knife, chop them as finely as you can. It is quite a laborious task to do once they have dried.
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Step 5
Add all of the ingredients EXCEPT THE OLIVE OIL (this will emulsify in your sauce and turn it cloudy. The taste, texture and look of your harissa will be second rate) to a small food processor and blend until coarse (do not over blend and turn this into a puree).
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Step 6
Remove and stir in your olive oil. Check and tweak the seasoning with salt to taste. Once you are happy, serve with absolutely anything.