Spring and I don’t have a great relationship. The fault is mine. I expect too much. As soon as we can string together a handful of warm days I’m ready to get my herbs and vegetables into the ground. Just the slightest hint of life in my garden and I’m off to the farmer’s market with quite unrealistic hopes.
So now, as I look over the beds along the side of my house there is a hint of green coming back to the sage. Mixed among the buckets of dirt and hope, with their plastic labels of ‘borage’, ‘Nasturtium’, and ‘radish’ a pea has raised up a frail tendril and taken hold of the first rung of the trellis above it. Surely I’ve waited long enough. By now the market must be rich in bounty. With visions of ramps and rhubarb alive in my head I grabbed a canvas sack and headed off to be disappointed again.
The market was as good as could be expected for early April. There were lettuces that were local grown along with some of last year’s squash and potatoes. I bought some exciting watercress and some very peppery feather-like arugula. Everyone had spinach available but nowhere could I find something truly exciting to bring home. April was not proving to be the June I wanted it to be.
Then I saw something interesting. The scallions I had passed over had a small sign reading “our own: local grown”. Now they weren’t the ramps I’d hoped to find but they looked ready to stand in for the role. I bought up three bunches to bring back with me.
Ramps are the wild cousin to the green onions that sit so tamely on every supermarket shelf. They are broad leaved and smell strongly of garlic. They normally start appearing in April on menus and last only a few months. In Spain the coming of the ramps is greeted as an end to winter and the bars offer them grilled with a Romesco sauce. That’s how I want to treat the scallions I bought.
I first tried Romesco sauce while in college, working at Just A Taste in Ithaca. Jen, one of the owners, made a really amazing one. It was completely unlike the French sauces I had learned to make in Culinary school. Made not with stock but with olive oil it had a pronounced sweet and sour taste and had been thickened with ground nuts and bread. It seemed to resemble the Medieval sauces I was reading about which also used almonds as a thickener. The flavor seemed exotic and Moorish but of course one look at the ingredients ended theories of ancient roots. Both the tomato and the bell pepper would have been unheard of in Medieval Spain. I wish I was giving you Jen’s recipe but unfortunately my notes from that time were lost many moves ago.
Instead I went into Ayna Von Bremzen’s book The New Spanish Table. There I learned that the sauce originates in the Tarragona Region and may in fact have some root in medieval times. The name Romesco may come from the old Mozarabic word ‘rumiskal’ meaning to mix together. Bremzen’s book offers many versions of the sauce using ingredients as diverse as fish stock and chocolate but they all share some common traits. One is the Nora peppers which are a dried sweet pepper. They all also contain toasted nuts, garlic, bread and olive oil.
Bremen says that there are as many recipes for Romesco as there are cooks. That gives me the courage to try and recreate for you something like the Romesco I remember. Because it’s a great spring day, and because we’re going to grill the onions, I can create a recipe for the sauce that makes good use of a charcoal fire. I’m hoping to get some smoky flavors into the Romesco sauce when we use the grill to concentrate the sweetness of the vegetables in the sauce.
All the grilling will happen quick and can be done early in the day. It will be important to have everything ready so you can work quickly at the grill. Finding Nora peppers in the suburbs of Philadelphia was not going to be possible so bell peppers would have to stand in. Begin by oiling a red bell pepper liberally with olive oil. Do the same for three Roma tomatoes, sliced in half. Oil a whole head of garlic and wrap it tightly in four squares of foil. Now is also a good time to trim up the scallions and toss them with oil and sea salt in a separate bowl. Slice a thick piece of crusty bread for each person plus 2 for the sauce and lightly oil these as well. Once all this mise en place is ready head on out to the grill.
With the coals and the grate of the grill hot we’ll start with the pepper. You want to completely blacken the skin. Leave it to cook for a few minutes on each side till its blistered and blackened. When you’re happy with the result take it hot and wrap it in foil or in a bowl tightly covered with plastic. As it cools it will steam in its own juice and the skin will peel off easily later. By roasting the pepper we changed it from the gassy fresh taste of the raw pepper to a very concentrated sweet flavor and made it easier to pound into a paste later.
Next you want to mark the scallions. Working in batches so as not to crowd the grill, lightly char the scallions. You want them to be blackened in spots but not uniformly so. They should be sweet and smoky, not burned so much as to be acrid. Return them to their bowl. We’ll heat them up again when we need them.
Now you want to mark the bread in the same way. The pieces for the guests just try to get some gentle color on them with a little charring. The two pieces for the sauce though, try to get those deeply toasted. A bit more char here won’t ruin things but try not to burn them. It helps to work on the colder edges of the grill. In the end you want them almost crisp like a crouton. Stale bread works well here but I never seem to have it when I want it.
Finally, we need to cook the tomatoes. Place them skin down and blacken the skins good; like you did with the peppers. When their done on that side if you can gently flip them cut side down and cook a couple minutes more. They will dry out a bit so the sauce will not be a runny. When you return them to their bowl if you have any fresh herb handy toss them in to steam with the tomato. By the grill I had some thyme and some boxwood basil but what you have around, or nothing, will work fine.
By now the coals in my little grill have started to cool down. Place the packet of garlic on the grill and close the lid. The garlic can sit there, undisturbed for the next forty minutes as the coals die out. When you come back to it, it will have transformed. Where it was once sharp and biting it will have mellowed to a sweet, smoky paste. Consider doing more heads of garlic than you need for this sauce. You can store the roasted garlic paste in the back of the fridge for a week and use it to spice up all sorts of dishes. It’s great with mashed potatoes or pasta. Made into a compound butter with some parsley and anchovies it’s great smeared over steak. Served with olive oil and bread it’s a complete lunch.
As the garlic cooks away we can begin to assemble the sauce. Originally, Romesco would be made in a mortar and pestle but a food processer will make it quick and easy. Peel away the blackened skin from the pepper you roasted and remove the seeds. Tear the flesh into the bowl of the processer. Next take the skins off the tomatoes. Squeeze them gently and to remove some of the seeds and these can go into the processer.
The two slices of bread for the sauce should be roughly cubed. They should yield about half a cup of bread (if your short make up the difference now with some untoasted bread). Start these frying in a little olive oil in a sauté pan. As they start to get crisp add a quarter cup slivered almonds and continue to cook till the almonds take on a golden color. Pour this all off into a bowl and set it aside for later.
If the garlic has cooked enough bring it in and carefully open the foil. With the root of the bulb of garlic on your cutting board cut the bulb in half parallel to the cutting board. This will expose all the individual cloves. Now by pressing with the side of the knife you can squeeze out the roasted garlic. Put the garlic paste from one head of garlic into the processer with the pepper and tomato. Also add one uncooked clove of garlic. Run the food processor till this is smooth.
Add the bread and almonds to the processer and process again till smooth. With the motor running slowly drizzle in a half cup of olive oil. It will form an emulsion and you will see the color of the sauce change from a rich red to a nutty burnt orange. At this point I add a pinch of cayenne pepper and a teaspoon of smoked paprika. Ayna Von Bremzen warned against smoked paprika but here it keeps with the theme of our sauce. You also want a juice of a lemon and about one tablespoon of sherry vinegar. Spin the processer again to incorporate the seasonings.
Taste the sauce at this point for seasoning. It will need a little salt. You want to be sure you can taste the smoke from the paprika and the heat of the cayenne. The pepper will get stronger as it sits but you should detect it at this stage. Also make sure there is a pleasant tartness to the sauce from the lemon and vinegar. You can add more at this point if needed to make the sauce sweet and tart. The sauce is ready now but the flavors will be even better after a night in the fridge.
To make my lunch of grilled scallions I heated the grilled bread in the oven and the pre-grilled scallions in a dry sauté pan. When the bread is warm, smear on a generous spread of Romesco sauce. Top with sliced tomato and then the warmed scallions. Another spoonful of Romesco completes the service. I ate mine with quail eggs and arugula. Any small salad or nice chips make this a great spring lunch.
Romesco is a traditional accompaniment to fish (especially monk fish), grilled vegetables, and eggs. Its great with potatoes or as a sandwich spread. It will work with lighter meats like chicken, veal , and pork but I think beef tends to overpower it. Have fun and be creative. The recipe I described above and outline at the end of this article makes enough to use over a week for many meals.
I’ll leave you with a great side that couldn’t be easier. Simply boil some small potatoes in their skins. Drain, and while they are still hot toss them in the Romesco. Because the sauce has so much depth of flavor the potatoes are amazing. Your guests don’t need to know how easy it was.
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My Romesco Sauce
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1 bell pepper, red
3 Roma tomatoes
1 head garlic + 1 clove
2 thick slices crusty bread
¼ cup almonds, slivered
½ cup olive oil
1 lemon
1 tbs sherry vinegar
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp smoked paprika
-Roast the pepper, peel and seed
-Roast tomatoes, peel and seed
-roast garlic (reserving one clove raw), squeeze out paste
-Toast bread, then cube and fry in 1tbs olive oil.
Add almonds and cook till almonds are golden
-In the bowl of a food processer with a metal blade process pepper,
tomato, garlic paste, and raw till smooth.
-Add bread and almond mix and process again till smooth
-with motor running slowly drizzle in oil to form an emulsion
-season with juice of lemon, vinegar, cayenne and paprika
Oh, yes, that is very much up Kaia's alley.
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