Everybody loves romesco sauce! (Well, everybody except my 6-year-old son, but he claims to have eaten earthworms, so his taste is suspect. Shocking, I know! We’re vegetarian!) When people first taste romesco sauce, their faces instantly light up, and they have to eat some more and they say, “What is this? It’s delicious!” I’ve seen it happen many times!

Romesco sauce is a combination of roasted red peppers, roasted tomatoes, hazlenuts, almonds, bread, and lots of paprika. In an ideal world, you’d roast the peppers over an open fire, and roast the tomatoes for hours in your oven. In a slightly less ideal world, you’d roast the peppers on the flame of your gas burner. Sigh. I don’t have a gas stove, so I broil my peppers, and they turn out fine. And this time of year, I cheat and use roasted tomatoes from a can. (Hunts fire-roasted diced, as it happens). You could also use peppers from a jar. This sauce will still taste good!

It’s a very versatile sauce. Good with roasted vegetables, good as a dip for chips or crackers, good on sliced baguette, good as a pizza sauce, a pasta sauce, a sauce for savory pies (particularly those with lots of greens) or croquettes.

Here’s Art Pepper’s Red Pepper Blues.
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