This quick and easy romesco sauce has been the highlight of my day, I’m not going to lie. It’s England and it’s December which means that today is cold, wet and miserable. Despite Covid19 still ruining everything today I really found myself craving summer and something nice!
Romesco sauce is a beautifully rich and smokey sauce made from roasted red peppers and toasted almonds. It’s delicious! Romesco sauce is kind of a red pepper pesto in a way! It can be eaten cold as a dipping sauce (particularly nice with toasted pitta or flat bread). You could eat it hot served as a pasta sauce. It’s super versatile. I reckon it would be great under some gorgeous baked eggs like a Spanish style shakshuka. Actually, that’s definitely going on the list to try!
Today though it is going to be the main component of one of my favorite starters at a chain of restaurants in the UK called Zizzi; Garlic King Prawns.
How do you make a quick and easy romesco sauce?
If you’ve got everything in your cupboards, you can’t go wrong. Add all your ingredients to a blender and whiz it up! That’s it.. After reading a couple of recipes today the ones that seemed to make the most authentic romesco sauce included sherry vinegar. Typically this was was the only thing I didn’t have! I substituted it for a red wine vinegar made in Italy that seemed to do the trick.
Some recipes, including this one, say to add white bread. I wanted to have a nice toasty flavor to this sauce. For this I drizzled a couple of slices of tiger loaf bread (or giraffe bread depends on your persuasion here) with extra virgin olive oil and chucked it under the grill. This grilled bread gave the same golden colour and crisp texture of fried bread (minus grease). It was perfect for this quick and easy romesco sauce! It did exactly as I wanted it to and added an extra element.
Here is my recipe for a quick and easy romesco sauce! Enjoy!
Quick and easy Romesco Sauce
Ingredients
- 375 g roasted red peppers I used a jar of these in a sweet vinegar brine
- 50 g Almonds, toasted
- 2 Slices rustic style white bread
- 2 tbsp olive oil, extra virgin, plus extra for drizzling
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 handful flatleaf parsley finely chopped
- 1 tsp sea salt flakes
Instructions
- drizzle olive oil over 2 slices of the rustic white bread and stick under the grill until toasted. Flip the slices and repeat. Leave to cool.
- add your almonds to a frying pan and toast over a medium heat for 3 minutes. Don't burn them – move the frying pan around every now and again to help this. Allow to cool.
- Add the toast, toasted almonds and all other ingredients to a blender and blend thoroughly.
- Either serve immediately with crudités of vegetables, toasted pitta bread or whatever you like to dunk OR spoon into a jar and keep in the fridge until you're ready for it.
[…] version of this dish uses a home-made romesco sauce. It’s taken a couple of attempts to get it right. Zizzi’s version, or the sauce they use, is […]