Introducing my Black Garlic Harissa!!! So exciting!!!! (PLUS a discount for this amazing garlic)

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I have been playing with some black garlic recently; the lovely people at Balsajo Black Garlic sent me some to play with and I’ve had a LOT of fun! Over the next week I will be sharing my various dishes and recipes with you and hope that you like them 🙂

Black garlic is just that: black! The garlic bulbs are slow roasted for a very long time to create these beautiful, shiny, soft, balsamicky cloves. They are so soft you can squeeze them between your fingers and so tasty that you just want to eat them all up as they are…however, I have forced myself to actually cook with them and not just eat them!! I’ve added black garlic to endless dishes in their original form and it adds a lovely extra to any dish..

..like this one, harissa pan cooked cauliflower with pumpkin seeds and black garlic. You’ll be seeing more uses like this, but today I want to share with you the experiment I am most proud of, my black garlic harissa, and keep on reading right to the bottom for a fabulous discount offer from Balsajo Black Garlic just for you 🙂

I’ve read a lot of harissa recipes, and made a lot. One of my favourites is Kellie’s, which I’ve used and amended to my tastes quite a few times now; I recently read another version in Thomasina Miers cookbook ‘Chilli Notes’ in which she roasts all of the vegetables and this was my starting point for my black garlic harissa.

My black garlic harissa

Ingredients

2 long red peppers or 2 red bell peppers
2 large tomatoes or 4 medium tomatoes
2 red onions
3-4 fresh red chillies
Olive oil to taste
3 tsp cumin seeds
3 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp dried coriander / bunch fresh coriander
Juice of 1-2 lemons
Salt and pepper

AND a bulb of black garlic cloves, removed from bulb

Method

Preheat oven to 200C/390F

Roughly chop the peppers, tomatoes and onion and toss in olive oil with whole chillies and black garlic cloves.

Season and roast in oven until they start to char and become soft.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pan.

In a warm pan, dry fry the spices gently until the aromas start to release, ensure not to burn them. Remove from heat.

Add everything to your food processor, scraping the vegetables from the oven pan along with all of the lovely juices and oil and mixing with the spices. Whizz to a consistency you like, I like mine a bit chunky.

Add lemon juice a little at a time to suit your taste and mix well. The lemon juice really lifts the flavour and brings out the taste of the black garlic.

Stir dried or chopped coriander through the mix.

NOTE: I found this quite spicy to I threw in some extra oven roasted tomatoes to take the heat down a bit.

Store in a clean jar with a layer of olive oil over the top to preserve the harissa.

OR…like me..dig in with a spoon!!!!

Then, add it to EVERYTHING!!!! spread on toast, use it to marinate chicken, cook vegetables in it, experiment and play with it 🙂

Over the next week I will be sharing lots more recipes with black garlic and hope you like them. If you fancy trying black garlic for yourself (and I highly recommend it!!!) visit the brand new online shop and enter ‘foodbod’ as your discount coupon code and receive 10% off the prices plus free shipping until 28th February 2015. Enjoy!!!

I have not been paid to tell you about black garlic, I do not work for Balsajo, I am merely sharing something that I love with you because I just can’t keep it to myself!!!

I’m bringing my Black Garlic Harissa to this week’s Fiesta Friday and hope that the party goers like it. This week we have two lovely hosts: Tina and Juju – pop over the join the fun and say hello 🙂