Romesco-ish sauce

What a glorious sunny day. I have loved prepping, tasting and writing up this little post.

I used to order Abel and Cole vegetables for a while in England. It was one of the stepping stones to my appreciation of decent fruit and vegetables and a good induction in how to use different seasonal produce. They put handy ‘how to’ cards in the box with easy ideas of how to make the most of your order.

I’ve taken one of their suggestions and tweaked it.  Their Romesco is a bread based sauce. I have switched in parmesan and upped the garlic to make a really flavoursome pesto style sauce or dip.

We’ve ploughed through three batches of this one, so I’m confident I’ve done something right.

You don’t need much of this sauce, but maybe grate some extra parmesan when serving. Try it with roasted vegetables, salads, pasta or fish.

You will need:

• 1 x large roasted red pepper (up to 30 minutes whole, then peel skin off when cool)
• 60g almonds
• 60g parmesan
• 4 roasted garlic cloves (roast whole for 15 minutes, then squeeze out the pulpy garlic)
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked sweet paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon chilli powder
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• Squeeze of lemon
• 75g olive oil

All you do:

1. Pop the pepper and garlic in to roast at around 180 degrees (fan oven temperature).
2. Toast the nuts for 20 minutes in a frying pan (without oil) on the hob.
3. Once the pepper, nuts and garlic are ready, measure everything else while they cool.
4. Once you have peeled the cooler pepper, pop the ingredients in a blender and blitz up.
5. Taste and then tweak any of the ingredients if needed. (I used exactly as detailed here, but you may want to sharpen with more lemon or loosen up with more oil).
6. Season to taste.

The best advice I can give, is that you pop the sauce in ice cube trays and freeze. Then you can use as and when you want it. It’s a go-to mid week option in our house, or a last minute choice if people are coming over.

My favourite way to eat this is to simply pop a couple of frozen cubes on top of a piece of fish, loosely wrap in foil then bake until the fish is cooked through and the sauce is warmed through.

Beautiful! Hope you can try this one soon.