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Hi, I'm Jane from http://www.BlenditandMendit.com where I show you how I turn my VitaMix blender
into my #1 anti-aging tool. Welcome. Today I am making a Harissa dip.
Turns out it's a north African condiment / paste /sandwich spread and they use it for everything
and I looked up the ingredients and I thought, hmmm... I've got the chili's and chili powder
in the house, I've got the garlic, I've got the cumin, I've got the salt, I've got the
lemon - but I just didn't want to pour oil in there because I have these ripe avocados
ready to go and ready to be used, so I got to thinking - why can't I make a harissa dip
with avocado as a base? Well, you can. I am. I want to show it to
you, it's delicious. And I can just see spreading it on some crusty bread for a sandwich spread;
dipping crispy, crispy, crackers into it. And I'm going to show you what kind
of a lunch I made out of it today. So simple, so delicious, let's get going. Scoop out the
flesh of a nice, ripe but firm avocado, put it into the VitaMix. Squeeze the juice of
one lemon. Now for the chili peppers. I used dried Ancho chilis.
You can use whatever kind of dried pepper you want for this. In fact, in some of the
recipes I read, when you make harissa, you soak the dried chili peppers.
Well, I didn't want to do that because I know from experience that if I'm using a high water
content food, like an avocado, the dried portion of the recipe will soak up
that water and I wanted this to be a nice, thick dip, so, I did not soak these. I'm using
3 of the dried ancho chili peppers. You can hear the seeds in there...
... you can either break the top and the stem off and shake out the seeds or you can throw
the whole thing in there. Remove the stem and the little nub, but I threw the
three dried chili peppers with their seeds into the blender, but removed the stem and
the nub. One small clove of garlic, just a little bit.
You don't want the garlic to overpower this recipe, but you want it in there. Now for
the spices. It so happens that this chili powder was what had fallen to the bottom of
the bag of my dried chilis, so you can use regular chili powder that you get from the
spice area or you can have the dried chili powder that naturally
accumulates in a bag of dried chilis. 1/2 teaspoon of cumin and 1/2 teaspoon of sea
salt.
I'm excited to blend this and show you what it's like. I heard the word harissa for the
first time on the Food Network a couple days ago. I looked up the ingredients and
I thought, but wait, I've got this, I want to do that, I want to change this, I want
to make it like that.
So I've created an instant lunch. All you need is a scoop of the harissa avocado dip
that I just made, some crackers, a beautiful, aromatic sprig of basil.
You don't even have to slice it up, just take a leaf and eat. And some slices of this beautiful,
heirloom tomato. So here's how I'm going to eat this.
I'm taking the cracker, putting a little of the harissa dip on it, a little bit of that
heirloom tomato and I'm covering it all up with a leaf of basil.
Now is that not gorgeous? Then all you have to do...
[crunch, crunch] [chew, chew]
Mmm...
really delicious. The burst of juices from the tomato, that's the way a tomato should
taste.
The flavor of this dip is unbelievablely delicious. I want you to make it. Mmm... I'm telling
you to make this, and please get back to me and tell me what you think about it.
Leave your comments below, because I learn from them and all the other viewers learn
from your reviews. Thanks!