MoFo Day 14: Harissa

A couple of the recipes I want to make this week use harissa, which is a very spicy paste used in Moroccan and Tunisian recipes. In the past I've either bought a jar of harissa paste or used a harissa spice grinder which I bought from Oxfam a few years ago Today I decided to make harissa from scratch.  

I only had bird's eye chillies which are very hot. This was possibly a mistake. As I started to process the harissa, microscopic fragments of chilli were released into the air - my nose started to run and tears rolled down my face. Perhaps a mask might have helped! The resulting harissa is exceedingly hot - when a recipe calls for a teaspoonful I am going to try using half that amount and the next time I make it I shall use a milder chilli.

Harissa

25 g red chillies, de-seeded and diced
1 small red bell pepper, de-seeded and diced
2 cloves of garlic, crushed 
1 Tbsp fresh coriander (cilantro), chopped  
1 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
1 tsp cumin seeds, crushed
1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 Tbsp vegetable stock

Blend all of the ingredients together to form a paste.

Storage recommendation in all the recipes I've read is to put the paste into a jar and cover with a layer of olive oil. This would not be Eat to Live friendly so my plan is to store some in the fridge and to freeze teaspoonfuls  in an ice cube tray for storage in the freezer. 

        

MoFo Day 2: Albondigas

It's my second virtual day in Spain and after a scan through my recipe books I decided to tackle Albondigas - usually meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce. I found a great recipe for Tempeh Albondigas at Vegan Dad's blog but I didn't have any tempeh in the fridge so I decided to use his recipe for inspiration and to adapt the wheatballs from Robin Robertson's Vegan on the Cheap. You can find the recipe online here, but I highly recommend Vegan on the Cheap, which is one of my favourite cookbooks. I haven't made these wheatballs since I started Eating To Live so I was interested to see how they would turn out without any added oil. I replaced the olive oil in the recipe with a tablespoon and a half of vegetable stock, used smoked paprika in place of sweet paprika and added half a teaspoon of ground cumin to the mix. I baked them in the oven on baking parchment and the wheatballs kept their shape much better than the last time, when I fried them. 

While the wheatballs were baking, I made my sauce. I made it in the Vitamix and then heated it up on the stove so it was really quick and easy. The recipe calls for heating the wheatballs in the sauce - I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't fall apart when cooking. This made plenty of really tasty, sweet and spicy smoky sauce and I'm confident that it will freeze well, as do the wheatballs. I served mine with some steamed cauliflower, broccoli, petits pois and edamame. It would be really good as part of an assortment of tapas, so I hope to try out some more tapas recipes as the week goes on.

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Sauce:

3 cloves of garlic, crushed

half an onion chopped

2 tomatoes, chopped 
1 small red bell pepper, chopped

400 g creamed tomatoes or passata

1 Tbsp red wine vinegar

2 Tbsp fresh parsley

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

1/4 tsp ground cumin

1 date

juice of half a lemon 

freshly ground black pepper

Put garlic, onion, tomatoes and red bell pepper in the blender together with half the passata and blend briefly. Add the remaining ingredients and blend until smooth. If the sauce is too thick, add  some water or vegetable stock until you get the correct consistency.

Pour the sauce into a frying pan and heat over medium flame for 5 minutes. Add the wheatballs, coat with sauce and cook for a further 5 - 7 minutes.

Serves 3