Harissa!

The unseasonal cold spell that fell in the mountains outside Madrid threatened to put an quick end to the shoulder season for hot peppers. Got to put them up for winter. There’s a thing about this kind of Harissa with Sicilian style sun-dried tomato; pickled lemon and ginger; roasted peppers and garlic and the good kind of Extra-virgen olive oil. A thang you want more of, but the only way to get it is to make it. So there you have it —that’s it. But, you know, it‘s always fun to fuck around with new vinegars.

Like with the uncertainty of this years Flu vaccine in Spain this year; should the vaccine contain 3 strains or four? These vinegars are the vaccine to bring these peppers to maximum flavor with out killing anybody; why not mix them up a bit.

The basil wintering in the living room brightens up the lemons. Pickled garlic with basil in this aged lemony brine. We’re gunna have looped the Mediterranean pretty soon.

Chilies in vinegar, Safron flowers, garlic, coriander, black pepper, onion, …

This is a pretty crazy way to hake a hot sauce, but it’s worth it to make this “cosa nostra” style: the chilies pickled, the tomatoes dried. The fresh and the aged. That vinegar from the ginger from last spring. A squeze of fresh lime. Those lemons chopped up finely with the ginger. It’s cosa nostra because it’s just too much trouble to make a lot of it. That could be our brand name; fresh ground pepper.