Charif
Charif
Charif is a spicy sauce attributed to North African Jewish cuisine. Essentially a purée of various ingredients in a tomato base, charif serves triple duty as a condiment, a seasoning paste for meats or, when watered down, a cooking sauce for fish. Our version ups the traditional amount of tomatoes for a more sauce-like consistency. We like to use jarred red hot cherry peppers for this sauce as well as a dash of Aleppo pepper—a hot pepper flake originally from Syria, because we feel the sweetness of the cherry pepper and the fruity, cumin-like notes from the Aleppo pepper make for a more complex sauce. Although this fast sauce can be used immediately, refrigerating the sauce at least overnight allows the flavor to develop further, so do so if you can.
Ingrediënten
- MAKES: about 3 cups 720 ml
- 1 red bell pepper
- 60 ml extra virgin olive oil divided
- 4 cloves garlic
- 4 red hot cherry peppers stemmed and seeded
- ½ tsp Aleppo pepper flakes
- 80 ml white wine vinegar
- 1 28-oz [828-ml] can whole tomatoes, drained
- 2 tsp 10 g coarse salt
- 1½ tsp 5 g ground cumin
- ½ tsp ground coriander
Instructies
- Preheat the oven to broil.
- Brush the bell pepper with olive oil and place it on a tin foiled lined rimmed sheet pan or in a baking dish.
- Broil the pepper in the preheated oven until it’s blackened and blistered on one side, about 7 to 8 minutes.
- Using tongs, turn over the pepper and roast the other side until blackened and blistered, another 7 to 8 minutes.
- Remove the pepper from the oven and allow it to cool enough to handle.
- Peel the skin from the peppers and remove the stems and seeds.
- Place the red bell pepper and the remaining olive oil, garlic, cherry peppers, pepper flakes, vinegar, tomatoes, salt, cumin and coriander in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to a thick sauce, about 1 minute.
- Scrape the sauce into an airtight container and refrigerate.
- Pour, as desired, over fish pieces to stew or over whole, deep-fried fish such as larger sardines or red mullet.
