Saucy!

When we were in Barcelona, we fell in love with tapas. (Which, when spoken audibly sounds a lot like "topless" we've learned. That's not what we fell in love with. :-) We loved the Spanish meal of appetizers so much that we did our best to recreate some of them at a picture party we hosted. Then, when a Groupon popped into my email offering 50% off at a tapas restaurant in Scottsdale, I was all over it, like a monkey on a cupcake, as a friend would say.

Last weekend, we finally decided to try out this restaurant, called Iruna. When we got there, Steve says the following to the waitress: "We're accustomed to European tapas. How does this compare to that?" I love that we can say that :-) While the ordering and presentation style was a bit different, the food was just as good. Ben adored the Manchego cheese with jamon, and we all really liked the Romesco sauce that came on several dishes, including asparagus and the trout. The tangy, crunchy red sauce prompted us to spend a chunk of time trying to identify the different ingredients in it.

Oddly enough, I'd had a Martha Stewart recipe for this sauce for quite a while, but since I didn't exactly know what it was, hadn't ever tried it. Luckily, our tapas trip enticed me to try it. Before I started, I looked up a different recipe on Allrecipes just to have a comparison and to see what others had said about it. I ended up going with the Allrecipes version, which turned out excellently, but I'm sure either works fine. I topped roasted vegetables with it, and I've read that others have used it as a dipping sauce for a variety of things, including bread, fresh veggies, etc. Hope you like this tangy sauce! :-)

Romesco Sauce


6 Roma tomatoes, halved
1 red bell pepper, quartered
12 garlic cloves, peeled
2/3 c. olive oil
kosher salt to taste
1 slice bread
1/2 c. toasted whole almonds
2 T. red wine vinegar (up to 1/2 c. to taste)
1/2 t. Spanish paprika
1 pinch crushed red pepper flakes, or to taste

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees and grease baking sheet. Place tomatoes, red pepper and garlic cloves onto prepared baking sheet. Brush the vegetables with soem of the olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Bake in the preheated oven until the garlic has turned golden brown, 15-20 minutes. Remove from the oven, allowing to cool for 10 minutes. While the vegetables are cooling, bake the bread slice on one of the oven racks until golden brown. Remove and allow to cool.

2. Scrape the vegetables and and pan juices into a food processor or blender. Break the bread into pieces and add to the food processor, along with almonds, vinegar, paprika, and red pepper flakes. Puree until finely ground, then drizzle in the remaining olive oil with the machine running. Season to taste with additional salt if necessary.