Although nowadays it is really easy to find very different recipes to make a cold romesco sauce, on this website we also provide our version. It is a general purpose preparation, which will be used to season grilled fish, meats, vegetables… It is based on one of the first published romesco sauce recipes: that of Antoni Adserà in his 1981 book.
Ingredients for 6 people:
• 2 small fried dried ancho peppers, or a large one (see the section How to fry the chorizo for the Romesco recipes).
• 2 garlic cloves.
• 1 sprig parsley, finely chopped (if you have it).
• 1 thin slice of bread from a 250 g loaf.
• 12 roasted hazelnuts and 12 roasted almonds (blanched).
• 200 g of fresh grated tomato.
• 60 ml of extra virgin olive oil.
• 25 ml of apple cider vinegar.
Preparation.
• We start by frying the slice of bread in a pan on both sides, taking care not to burn it and letting it cool on absorbent kitchen paper. We also fry only one of the two garlic cloves, toasting it a lot but always without burning it.
• Put the tomato, the nuts, the parsley, the raw garlic clove, the fried slice of bread, the fried garlic clove in the mixer and beat.
• Add the two fried dried ancho peppers and reduce everything to a fine paste.
• Now we carefully add the extra virgin olive oil little by little while beating, so that the oil integrates well into the previous mixture. Finally we add the vinegar.
• We taste the salt and vinegar sauce and readjust. If the sauce is too thick, add a little more oil sparingly, continuing to beat.
• If possible, it is ideal to let this sauce marinate for about six hours once it is made and before consuming it.
Variations.
• If you don’t like the taste of garlic very much, try frying both garlic cloves.
• If you don’t like the taste of vinegar very much, try balsamic vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar.
• If you prefer a more orange color than red color in your romesco sauce, try a single small dried ancho pepper.
• If you like it spicy, try adding a very small peri-peri chilli to the mixer when adding the peppers.
