Levantine · Sauce
Muhammara
- Easy
- 20 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with an earthy, grounding base, a sweet edge rounding the corners, with warmth in the tail.
Ingredients
- 500 g red romano peppers
- 150 g shelled walnuts
- 60 g coarse dried breadcrumbs
- 40 g pomegranate molasses
- 20 g Aleppo pepper (pul biber)
- 4 g ground cumin
- 2 garlic cloves
- 80 ml olive oil
- 6 g fine salt
- 15 ml lemon juice, if needed
Equipment
Grill
The skills inside
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · nuts
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Blacken the peppers whole over a flame or under a hot grill until the skin is loose and papery all over, close them in a bowl for 10 minutes, then rub the skin away without rinsing, or the smoke goes down the sink. 10 min
- Toast the walnuts in a low oven for about 8 minutes, until they smell of butter and the skins craze, then cool them fully; warm walnuts grind to a bitter oily sludge. 8 min
- Pound or briefly pulse the walnuts, breadcrumbs, garlic, Aleppo pepper, cumin and salt to a coarse rubble, stopping well short of powder.
- Add the peppers and pomegranate molasses, work to a paste that still has grain in it, then beat in the olive oil in a slow stream until it turns glossy and holds a ridge.
- Rest an hour and taste: it should read sweet, then sour, then a slow warm heat. Correct with molasses or lemon.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes
- A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
- It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
- It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
- It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
- The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.
Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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