Basic · Year-round
Romesco, the long way
Peppers and tomatoes roasted until they blister black, ñoras soaked and scraped, almonds and hazelnuts toasted, bread fried in olive oil, all of it pounded into a rough, brick-red sauce that tastes of smoke and Catalonia. Enough for twelve. Make it the day before and it will thank you.
Romesco is a fisherman's sauce from Tarragona, and it has the manners of one. It is rough, it is red, it does not apologise. In the three sauces on this site you will find my hazelnut shortcut, the weeknight version. This is the other one, the full Catalan build, ñoras and almonds and hazelnuts together, everything roasted or toasted or fried before it goes near the blender. It takes an afternoon. It is worth every minute.
The ñora is the soul of it. A small, round, sun-dried pepper from the Levante, sweet and earthy with almost no heat, the flavour you cannot fake with paprika alone. Soak it, split it, scrape out the dark flesh with a spoon and throw the skin away. If you cannot find them, a spoonful and a half of ñora paste will carry you. Then the fire does the rest: peppers and tomatoes in a hot oven until they blacken at the edges, nuts toasted until the kitchen smells of them, bread fried golden in oil to thicken the whole thing and give it body.
Here is the rule people break: do not blend it smooth. Pulse it. Romesco is supposed to have grit and texture, a sauce you can see the nuts in, not a red hummus. Stream the oil in slowly with the machine on low, fold in the last chopped nuts by hand, then leave it alone in the fridge for at least an hour, better a few. It deepens. It settles. It becomes itself. Pull it out twenty minutes before it hits the table so the oil wakes back up.
- Total time
- 1 h 10 min
- Difficulty
- 2 / 5
- Pair with
- Calçots off the fire if you can find them, which is the whole reason this sauce exists. Otherwise charred leeks or spring onions, grilled fish, lamb chops, chicken from the barbecue, or just good bread torn by hand. A glass of cold fino on the side.
Ingredients
To roast
- 4ripe tomatoes, halved
- 2red peppers
Nuts & bread
- 100 galmonds
- 50 ghazelnuts
- 2 slicesdense white bread
Flavour
- 2dried ñora peppers (or 1½ tbsp ñora paste)
- 2garlic cloves
- 2 tbspsherry vinegar
- 1 tspsweet pimentón
- ½ tspsmoked pimentón
To finish
- 120 to 150 mlextra virgin olive oil, plus a little for the bread
- ½ tspsalt
- to tasteblack pepper
- ½lemon (optional)
Method
- 1
Roast the peppers and the halved tomatoes at 220 °C until they are soft and blistering black here and there, 25 to 35 minutes.
- 2
Put the peppers in a bowl, cover and leave them 10 minutes to steam. Then pull off the skins and remove the seeds.
- 3
Toast the almonds and hazelnuts briefly in a dry pan, until they smell like something.
- 4
Fry the bread golden in a little olive oil.
- 5
Using dried ñoras: soak them 15 to 20 minutes in hot water, split them open and scrape out only the flesh. Skin and seeds go in the bin.
- 6
Into the blender: tomato, pepper, ñora, garlic, the fried bread, about two thirds of the nuts, the sherry vinegar and both pimentóns.
- 7
Pulse briefly. Do not make it smooth. Romesco should keep some texture.
- 8
Run the blender on low and add the olive oil gradually, in a thin stream.
- 9
Season with salt, black pepper and, if it needs lifting, a small squeeze of lemon.
- 10
Roughly chop the remaining nuts and fold them in by hand, last.
- 11
Rest it in the fridge for at least an hour, better a few. Take it out about 20 minutes before serving. Spread it in a low dish, drizzle with olive oil, scatter roughly chopped toasted almonds and a small pinch of pimentón. Makes 650 to 750 g, about right for twelve.
