Salad dressing recipe

The incomparable Catalan romesco sauce

This salad dressing recipe, the romesco sauce, is not like anything you've ever tasted before. Catalan textures, Mediterranean aromas and healthy ingredients like hazelnuts, and olive oil make it an exquisite salad sauce with personality.

Romesco sauce. Delicious salad dressing recipe

Traditionally, the romesco sauce is consumed with escarole, fish stews, and vegetables like the popular grilled calçots, which are sweet green onions grown in Southern Catalonia.

There are different versions according to the dish you are cooking. Below I give you the cold romesco sauce recipe that functions as a salad dressing recipe.

Romesco sauce and dried peppers

One basic ingredient of this salad dressing recipe are dried red sweet peppers: Either pebrot de romesco, or a round one we call nyora. If you are unable to find one of these dried peppers in your country, substitute it for a mild sweet dried pepper, never a hot one, as romesco is a rather sweet sauce.

In the United States you can try this salad dressing recipe with ancho peppers, or mild New Mexico peppers.

This romesco salad dressing recipe calls for roasting the tomatoes and the garlic. It takes a little more time, but it gives your romesco sauce that slight smoked flavor you just don't get when frying the tomatoes and the garlic. I admit it, I am a escalivada fan. It makes your recipes so much sweeter and tender...

Ingredients for this salad dressing recipe

Serves 4

• Half head garlic – roasted and peeled
• 20 hazelnuts – roasted and peeled
• 20 almonds – roasted and peeled
• 4 pebrots de romesco, or nyores, or ancho peppers – seeded
• 6 small ripe tomatoes – roasted, peeled, and seeded
• ¾ teaspoon ground sweet red pepper
• 2 tablespoons wine vinegar
• 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• ¾ teaspoon salt

Romesco salad dressing recipe preparation instructions

Cooking time: 30 minutes.
Preparation time: about 20 minutes.

1. Soak the dried peppers in room temperature water for an hour. When you are ready to start the romesco sauce, scald them by pouring boiling water over them, and letting them sit in hot water for at least five minutes, or until they sink to the bottom of the bowl. Remove the seeds of the dried peppers, and cut them in half. With a teaspoon, scrape the inner pepper skin to collect the edible pepper meat.


2. Roast the half head of garlic and the tomatoes in the oven for half an hour as for a escalivada. When they are done, peel them.


3. Peel the hazelnuts and almonds by scalding them in hot water for a few minutes, and toast them in the oven or in a pan.


4. Add the hazelnuts and almonds to a mortar and crush and pulverize them with the pestle.


• You can prepare this romesco salad dressing recipe with a spice mill or food processor instead of mortar and pestle, if you prefer a quicker method. In this case, put all the ingredients together and work them into a thick paste. But remember to adjust the settings of your kitchen appliance so as not to liquidize the mixture.


5. Add the roasted tomatoes and garlic cloves, and mash them into the mixture.


6. Slowly, add the oil and mix well. Add the vinegar and work it into the mixture. Finally, add the sweet red pepper, and the salt. Continue working the mixture until you get a thick-textured paste.