Muhammara, sriracha red pepper homous & chermoula homous..

 I decided to revisit a few of my dips recently, it’s been a while since I’ve lived up to my ‘dip queen’ title! I make homous and dips weekly, but don’t always post them, I don’t want to bore anyone, but this little trio was so tasty with the roasted cauliflower, I thought I’d share it… 

I roasted the cauliflower in a drizzle of olive oil and towards the end of its cooking time, I threw over some za’atar, then put it back in the oven for a little while. That way the herbs, spices and sesame seeds in the za’atar wouldn’t burn, but would have long enough to add their flavour to the cauliflower. 

On the subject of cauliflower..it’s great that it’s become such a popular vegetable and that people are discovering so many ways to cook with it, but at my local market it’s now become too expensive for them to even stock! Oh well, it forces me to experiment with other veg I guess…

Onto the muhammara.. 

This is a middle eastern dip made with roasted red peppers, walnuts and pomegranate molasses. I was asked to the describe the flavour recently and I struggled to do it justice; there’s the sweetness of the red peppers, plus the slight sourness of the lemon juice and molasses, with the lovely addition of the walnuts..impossible to find the words! You’ll have to try it 🙂 

I’ve made this before, it was on my blog in the very early days of its existence, this is my chance share it again, with better photos!!! 

Muhammara

Ingredients

2 large red peppers (I like using the long red ones)

2 cloves of garlic

1 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp paprika

1/4 – 1/2 tsp chilli powder (depending on your taste)

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baharat/Arabic 7 spice mix

1.5 cups of fresh walnuts

2 tbsp pomegranate molasses

Juice of half a lemon 

1/2 cup ground almonds (traditionally this would be breadcrumbs, but I like it with the ground almonds) 

Method

Roast the peppers whole in the oven for 5-10 minutes, turning half way through, until you can feel that they are completely soft 

Remove them from the oven and place them in a plastic bag for a few minutes; this will make it easier to remove the skins

When they are cool enough to handle, remove the stalks, skins and seeds and put the flesh into your blender

Add all of the other ingredients and blend, but not too much, you want a grainy texture

Enjoy! 

Next, the red pepper and sriracha homous.. 

Whilst roasting the red peppers for the muhammara, I added in some more to make this..

Ingredients

2 large red peppers, roasted and skins & seeds removed as above 

150g drained cooked chickpeas

50g tahini

1 tsp paprika 

Juice of 1 lemon

2 cloves garlic

1-2 tbsp sriracha chilli sauce (to your taste) 

Method

Whizz it all up in your blender 

And lastly the chermoula homous.. 

Having made up some standard homous as well as the red pepper one above, I stirred in some of my recently made chermoula; the two together really compliment each other and create a lovely dip. 

  A table filled with colour and flavour, perfect for any day of any week (as far as I’m concerned that is!).

 I also made Linda’s lovely Algerian bread ‘khobz tajine’ again to go with it all..

 A big fat ‘yum’ from me!!