Harissa Paste

Well, my thermomix arrived yesterday. Actually it arrived on Thursday but I was working and didn't get home until after the post office had closed so I had to wait until Friday, during my lunch hour, to go collect it. I brought the package home, ripped it all open and stood there admiring it for a few minutes and then I had to go back to work. When I finally got home I got a call from my consultant, who is actually about 3 - 4 hours away from me. We did a demo over the phone. I got a little confused with some things but went over it all again once I got off the phone and was more confident. I didn't end up making anything in it last night as I was mulling over my options. 

I bought some harissa paste quite some time ago from ideli.com.au. I really liked it. It had a terrific flavour to it rather than just heat. When I finished it I was at a place where they had a different type so I bought that instead of buying more from ideli as I didn't want anything else and postage was a bit expensive for one thing. The other one that I bought was just more heat than flavour. I purchased another type and it was the same. There probably was flavour it was just overpowered by the heat. I recently decided that I would try making some of my own. I found several different recipes. In the end though I decided to wait until my thermomix arrived to try it out. So when it did this was the first thing I made. 

I wasn't sure about the Neil Perry recipe that I had found since I had never made anything in the thermomix before I wasn't too sure about converting a recipe straight up. So I searched around for a tmx recipe. I found this one and decided to give it a whirl. However, I did play around with things a bit. Unfortunately I didn't write down exactly what I was doing so I don't remember exactly what I did but I will give what I can remember. One thing I would definitely do next time is to scrape down the spices and grind again. The pieces of cumin in the end results were a bit larger than I would like. 

I used banana peppers instead of regular capsicum for roasting. I still only used two and they were really large. After I blended the whole thing up it wasn't exactly what I wanted. I cooked it for a little while and then blended again. I added some olive oil and blended further. It ended up about what I wanted. I put it in a sterile bottle in the fridge. I am sure it will be put to good use. Plus now that I have done it successfully I will make some for a friend who likes harissa too.

I should have taken a better photo but this is the only one I took.