Rose harissa (mild)
A mild harissa?? Blasphemy I hear you saying. But trust me on this, once you discover how wonderful and subtle the flavour of harissa really is, without the chilli overpowering everything, you’ll never go back.
This recipe has a hint of rosewater in the background, a very moroccan invention, and is wonderful with almost savoury dish.
This includes the lazy mans version, using canned tomato paste, but if you want to be more authentic then roast a red pepper or 2 in the oven, peel, seed, and use instead of the tomato.
Rose harissa paste
Simply delicious, this base recipe can be whipped up in 5 minutes and forms the base for a lot of north african cooking.
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp coriander seeds
- 1 tbsp cumin seeds
- 1 tbsp caraway seeds
- 2 sweet red peppers roasted until charred outside and soft inside
- a glug olive oil
- 4-6 cloves garlic
- 1/2 lemon juice
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tbsp rosewater
- 1 red chilli (optional)
- 100 g tomato paste optional
- bunch of fresh coriander (optional)
Instructions
- Dry-fry the spices for a minute or so, until fragrant. (optional)
Grind the spices into a powder in your blender. - Add the rest of the ingredients and blend until smooth. If you are using roasted red pepper as the paste base, then leave out the tomato paste. Chilli and fresh coriander optional - I like a little bit of chilli, 1 red chilli (depending on the heat), seeded, usually does the trick.Coriander is great if you're not cooking with the harissa - if you're cooking for any serious period of time the coriander just disappears.
6 COMMENTS
[…] harissa recipe I’ve used here isn’t spicy at all, but feel free to beef it up if you like a bit more […]
Another one I will definitely try especially because the chilli is optional. I guess I can leave the rosewater out too if I don’t have in the kitchen? And 1/2 lemon juice – is it half a cup or juice of half a lemon?
You can leave the rosewater out, but it’s so delicious you’re going to have to make it again with the rosewater in 🙂
Juice of half a lemon, just to be clear…
[…] you don’t have harissa or tahini on hand, they are easy to make, harissa here, and tahini recipe […]
[…] I strongly recommend occasionally making a big batch of Harissa paste and keeping it in the fridge – it’s such a flavour explosion and goes well with almost anything, recipe here. […]
thank you for your information,what’s next?