Romesco Sauce

The dominant toasted nuttiness of Alicia’s recipe for salsa de romesco come from hazelnuts, almonds and bread that are fried in olive oil. She encourages you to pound them in a ceramic mortar with a wooden pestle to form the base of the sauce, but you would get good results in a food processor. Roasted tomatoes and dried nyora (spelled ñora in Castillian Spanish) peppers reconstituted in red wine vinegar contribute acidity, fruitiness and their vermilion color. The combination of roasted and raw garlic adds complexity, while cayenne adds a hint of heat. Extra virgin olive oil (the more, the better) gives the sauce an unctuous consistency. The goal, as in any dish, is to balance the contrasting flavors so that they form a symphony without any one player taking over.

Ingredients

  • 1-2 dried ñora chiles

  • 2-4 T red wine vinegar

  • 8-10 hazelnuts, peeled

  • 8-10 whole almonds, blanched

  • 1 slice bread, crusts removed, torn into 1-inch pieces

  • approximately ¾ cups extra virgin olive oil

  • 1 small tomato

  • 1 ½ cloves garlic, one whole and unpeeled, the half clove peeled and minced

  • sea salt to taste

  • ½ teaspoons cayenne pepper

Directions

  • Preheat the oven to 400F.

  • Tear chile(s) in half and remove stem and any seeds. In a pan, heat the chiles in enough vinegar to cover the chile halves and allow to soak until softened, about 15 minutes. Use a butter knife to scrape the inner pulp free from the papery skin of the pepper and set aside. Discard the skin. Reserve the vinegar.

  • In another pan, fry the nuts and bread in &frac14 cup of the olive oil over medium heat until golden brown. Scoop out the toasted nuts and bread and reserve them. Save the olive oil, allowing it to cool to room temperature, to add to the sauce later.

  • Roast the tomato and whole clove of garlic in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove the peel of both the tomato and the garlic.

  • In a mortar, pound the raw garlic with a pinch of salt. Then add the nuts, bread and roasted garlic and pound to a paste. Add the tomato, pepper pulp, cayenne, 2 t of the reserved vinegar, salt and continue to pound.

  • Gradually drizzle in olive oil, first the nut infused oil and then an additional ½ to ¾ cup oil, until the sauce reaches a spoonable consistency. Adjust the flavor by adding more vinegar and salt to your taste.

  • Alternatively, purée all the ingredients in a food processor.

  • While you can use it right away, the sauce tastes even better the next day and keeps for about a week.