Simple Romesco Sauce

Romesco, a traditional Spanish sauce, may sound like a super simple sauce made with peppers and tomatoes, but it packs a surprisingly huge punch of flavor.

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With its use of tomatoes and peppers, romesco sauce sounds like the perfect summertime dish, one to make when tomatoes and peppers are at their peak. But this sauce is also the perfect way to use up late season garden produce. That’s exactly how I came to make it on a chilly fall weekend. My dad had a prolific pepper crop this year, and even as October brings cold weather, his pepper plants are still thriving. So of course, running out of ways to use them himself, he gave me a huge bag of peppers to bring home. I immediately thought of a trip I took a trip to Spain a few years ago where I completely fell in love with bold and zippy romesco sauce. So this is my attempt at homemade romesco, and honestly it’s every bit as delicious as the sauces I had in Spain.

SO WHAT’S IN THIS SAUCE?

Romesco sauce really is super simple ingredient-wise. But like I say with a lot of recipes, if you’re using really good high-quality ingredients, you can make something truly magical. The ingredients seem unassuming: roasted red peppers, roasted tomatoes, garlic, almonds, a splash of white wine vinegar and some bread. But when you combine these ingredients, you get a sauce that’s really special and perfectly balanced in flavor. Almonds bring nuttiness, roasted red peppers a charred earthiness, tomatoes some sweetness and acidity, and garlic a punch of savoriness and sharpness.

Traditionally, romesco sauce is used to accompany fish. But when you have a sauce that’s this delicious, you’ll want to put it on just about everything, from eggs to crostini to pasta. Personally, I used a spread of my romesco on avocado toast for breakfast, and the combination was ridiculously delicious.

A SPICY ROMESCO

Romesco is traditionally made with sweet red peppers. Bur surprisingly enough, I actually used jalapenos for this recipe, because that’s what my dad had growing prolifically in his garden. Now these jalapenos ended up working perfectly for this recipe for two reasons. Number one, because they were red (simply because my dad left them on the plant until they turned red). Romesco is traditionally a beautifully vibrant red color, and using green jalapenos would muddy that color. And number two, because my dad’s jalapenos (with the seeds and ribs removed) are actually very mild. If you made this sauce with spicy peppers only, it would probably be closer to a hot sauce. But using a mild red jalapeno gives you a romesco with just the right amount of heat.

Now I know that this specific romesco sauce made with these specific red-and-mild jalapenos would probably be hard to recreate, because usually all you can find in the grocery store are the green-and-spicy jalapenos. So the recipe I’ve given below is for the more traditional romesco, made with red bell pepper. If you wanted to recreate something similar to my spicy romesco, you could try adding one red roasted spicy pepper (like a fresno chili) to add a bit of kick. But whether you make it spicy or not, this sauce is one you’ll want to most definitely try making, because it goes great on just about everything.