Monday 18 January 2021

Apricot Harissa a là Nigella

Happy New Year, my friends.  I hope you had a lovely festive break, and feel full of vim and vigour for 2021.  I'm not sure how I feel lately; life, blogging, writing, drawing, reading - they all seem a teensy bit hard right now, but let's keep on keeping on (as Martin Luther King once said).  So here's my first food post for this year - a recipe from Nigella's new book Cook, eat, repeat which Mr P. gave me for Christmas.  I am a big Nigella fan, and I love her new book which has lots of lovely essays as well as recipes.

During the Christmas break, Mr P. and I headed west to Murgon and Kingaroy, small Queensland towns.  He is designing a cultural centre in Murgon, and wanted to check the lay of the land.  We stayed in Kingaroy, the peanut capital.  And yes their peanuts are fabulous.  We loved the heritage-listed peanut silos out there - soooo huge!



the back end of the peanut silos

silos silos everywhere ... (built in 1938)


Silos to the right of us, silos to the left of us ... And a massive storm rolling in!  Anyway, back to the recipe.  Just so you know, I always re-write recipes from books, etc.  Re: copyright - a list of ingredients does not come under copyright but prose does, so I always re-write the method in my own words (and the ingredients if poss.).


ingredients:


20g. large dried chillies or 15-20g. small fresh red chillies

1 tsp cummin seeds

1 tsp coriander seeds

1 tsp caraway seeds

the seeds from 4-5 cardamom pods

45g. soft dried apricots, chopped into 2 or 3 pieces

1 tsp ground turmeric (or 15g fresh turmeric, sliced)

4 juicy cloves of garlic

25g. fresh ginger, peeled and chopped

a few small pieces of naked ginger (uncrystallised ginger) (optional - my idea)

2 tsp dried rose petals (optional - my idea)

2 tsp sea salt flakes or 1 tsp fine salt

1 tsp sweet smoked paprika

60 mL (4 x 15 mL tablespoons) olive oil

1 tsp vinegar (I used raspberry 'cos that's what came to hand first, tho' Nigella says to use apple cider vinegar)



Method:


If using dried chillies, put them in a bowl and pour over 500 mL of boiling water, and let them soak for 15 minutes

Tip the four kinds of seeds into a small frying pan, and let them toast carefully over medium heat - watch them, my friends as they can burn so very easily!  Give them a bit of a shake often as they toast.  When they smell delightful after a few minutes, take them off the heat and tip into a bowl to cool

Grab your food processor (I used my small one), and throw in the apricot pieces, turmeric, garlic, ginger, naked ginger, rose petals, salt and paprika

Drain the dried chillies, take off the stalks, and chuck 'em into the processor - or if using fresh chillies, de-stalk and throw into the processor

Add the cooled spices, the oil and vinegar and blitz to a lovely, fiery paste - Nigella suggests using a bowl and a stick blender but I think the processor was a better bet


Notes:


Try adding another couple of apricots if you want a fruitier flavour, and less chillies if they bring you out in a sweat

I only had small, fiery red chillies in my freezer so that's what I used - phew!  hot hot hot ... la la la ...

Naked ginger is ginger that has been infused in cane sugar syrup, and then allowed to dry out, with no crystals of sugar on the surface



gather your ingredients (this is 20g. small chillies BTW)

dry-toast your spices (no oil needed)

ready for zapping and blitzing

beautifully blitzed!

keeps for 2 weeks in the fridge

all ready for my next blog post :-)



artwork © Sherry's Pickings



40 comments:

  1. Happy New Year to you and Mr. P too!
    I love the idea of adding apricots in the homemade harissa. Can't wait to try the recipe! Thanks for sharing it, Sherry.

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    1. happy new year angie! i hope you like this paste. mine is very fiery:) cheers S

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  2. I love harissa but have never had one with these ingredients. Just going through the list of ingredients this looks like a wonderful combination of flavors.

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    1. thanks MJ. i used hot chillies so it is very hot - just the way we like it:) happy new year.

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  3. Happy New Year Sherry, and it's inspiring that Murgon is getting a new cultural centre. I also love travelling out to those western Qld towns. I'm slowly getting back into it as well, and sometimes wonder about this blogging caper, but there are many rewards. Your apricot recipe looks great with lots of oomph, yum. On your recommendation I will invest in Nigellas latest book. Could you do me a small favour? one of my readers said she tried to comment on my latest ice cream post and couldn't get it to publish. Would you mind seeing if you can leave a comment please, I don't know how else to check it and I'm certainly not fishing for comments or compliments!@#$ Hope you have a great week. Pauline.

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    1. hi pauline
      amazing about murgon. their population is only 2.4K!! i do find blogging hard sometimes but i'll see how i go this year. i love it but i wonder why i do it sometimes... I will happily comment on your blog. always a pleasure. happy new year!! xx

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  4. Happy New Year! I've had loads of harissa, but never had any with apricot. Neat idea! Fun recipe-- thanks.

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  5. I first heard of Kingaroy through playing Trivial Pursuit! The question is about Kingaroy being the peanut capital!

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  6. I can’t wait to see what you serve this with! I would guess any meats. Happy 2021 to you! Seems just like a continuation of 2020...

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    1. thanks Mimi. let's hope the vaccines will make a difference to us all in 2021. Yep ... meats it is ...

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  7. I've never heard of naked ginger, thanks. You are so lucky to be able to travel and move about, sigh...maybe we will be by summer. How do you intend to use the sauce? Those small chilis are hot, hot, hot!

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    1. hi Liz and happy new year to you. oh yes the harissa is very hot, but we love it. depends on the type and amount of chillies. i used fiery ones Yes we are lucky we can travel around our State and even interstate if we are careful. cheers S

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  8. Mr P here. Yes I am designing a cultural centre for Murgon which is a smallish country town in the South Burnett Regional Council. Bit of an honour really to be involved. I call it a large rectangular donut as it like a box with an internal court for windows. No windows outside for security. I am rather impressed with the local committee as they prepared a great brief and obtained all their funding rather quickly. I said to Mrs Pickings that I had to stand on the site, so we turned the 3 hour trip each way into a 2 day trip away. Fun drive through great country. There's been good rain and it was so green contrasted against the deep red volcanic soil. Mrs Pickings made wonderful egg sandwiches too for our day one. Go check out the district!

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  9. Haha - I really appreciate Peter Latemore's comment above. :-) Seriously, though, what a fun trip. Those peanut silos are awesome. I love seeing things like that! (I also love peanuts.) This is a fun recipe for sure, too - man, that one is loaded with all sorts of seasonings and aromatics. I bet it's delicious!

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    1. hi david
      hubby is enjoying designing that cultural centre. it's amazing really that a tiny town of 2.4K people is putting one in. Yep i adored those silos. and the peanuts were fab.

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  10. Happy New Year to you and your family too! First time I heard of apricots in harissa I bet they would taste amazing

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    1. thanks raymund. yes the apricots add a lovely fruity tang to the harissa. and i do like the rose petals too. cheers S

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  11. Trips to small towns like these are the best, Sherry! We've just returned from Queensland ourselves, having done the Brisbane - Hervey Bay - Rockhampton road trip and it was fabulous. What an interesting recipe and I love your use of raspberry vinegar - I have a bottle at home too and am trying to use it up in as many recipes as possible. It's delighful!

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    1. We love hervey bay, and maryborough and all the little country towns. I like to use raspberry vinegar in all sorts of dishes - it's great in salad dressings too. cheers S

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  12. Such an interesting recipe. From the looks of those fiery chilis I can just imagine how very hot this is. A spicy way to start the new year. Thank you for explaining about naked ginger, I've not heard of it before.

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  13. I absolutely love Nigella since forever! That sound so good!

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  14. This recipe is so original! I mean in France we have quite a strong Tuniisian community and harissa is pretty common! But the apricot version is unique! I should try, definitely try :)

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  15. I love Nigella, too, and leave it to her to make a wonderful fruity version of harissa. I still need to make an original harissa - I have work to do!

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    1. I copy so many of her ways of cooking - snipping herbs or bacon with scissors for one. THis harissa is great; worth a go.

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  16. I just received a copy of Nigella’s new book via Netgalley and am planning on a chicken recipe. It seems to be a combo memoir of recent times and cookbook, so far I like it.

    I’ve never had harissa, looks good.
    Love the silos and seeing where you visit. Great commentary by Mr. P. 😄

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    1. thanks Tina. yes we had a great little trip away. This harissa is a winner.

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  17. This would be a fine chutney to serve with curries or whatever else. We have lots of the small Hawaiian chili peppers growing and I've made them into everything from plain dried, pickled, and hot sauces. This will be a good addition to the repertoire.

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    1. hi claudia
      i think it's more of a marinade really but i guess you could try it as a chutney. it's quite hot...

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  18. Yum! Sounds delicious! I was cooking a lot of Chinese food this past week with red chili paste, dried red pepper, and sambal oeleck (spelling?) and overdid the heat on one recipe so even my husband complained, and he usually likes more spice than me.
    Those peanut silos are huge!

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    1. hi laurie
      those silos are truly amazing. soooo very very huge! just imagine how many peanuts are in 'em:)

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