Spicy Moroccan Chermoula

Chermoula is a North African marinade, commonly used to flavour fish in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. There seems to be loads of regional variants - I didn't find two recipes the same when I was looking for ideas! The main basis always seemed to be lemon juice, cilantro and garlic - then I took my favourites from the other to make my own Brighton variation... hot, spicy and very garlicky! Feel free to adjust quantities to taste. I also did this using both my mortar and pestle (for the dry) and mini-blender (for the wet) - but it could be done by hand or in a blender - whatever you would usually use to make pesto I guess!

It can be used as a marinade for fish, veg or meat. I also used it as a basis for a sauce (recipe to follow!), and heard the some people use it as a seasoning! If you follow my quantities, be careful though - there is a fair whack of garlic there, and if it isn't cooked out you'll keep more than the vampires away...

Spicy Moroccan Chermoula

• 1 large bunch cilantro
  
• 5 cloves garlic
• 2 red chillies
• 1 lemon
• a couple of glugs of olive oil
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1/2 tsp red chilli flakes
• 1/2 tsp coarse sea salt
• 1 pinch saffron
• 1 tsp paprika

In a pan, fry off the coriander and cumin seeds until you can smell the aromas being released. Transfer to the mortar and pestle along with the salt, and grind to a fine powder.

A couple of the recipes I saw suggested picking the leaves from the cilantro, and discarding the stalks, but the Scot in me baulked at this waste - they have so much taste! Instead, I picked most of the leaves from the bunch, then blitzed the stalks to a fine purée in my mini-blender (Add a few drops of olive oil to loosen if required.)

Transfer the blitzed stalks to a small mixing bowl, along with the spices.

Now, pulse the chillies and garlic to a fairly fine purée and add to the mix. I left the seeds in because I wanted it HOT. But feel free to take them out and save your palette!

Grate the zest from the lemon, and add that, along with the juice from the lemon to the bowl.

I then finely chopped the cilantro leaves by hand. I wanted to keep some roughness to the marinade - and it only took a minute - but feel free to do this in the blender to save time :)

Now mix all the ingredients together, adding olive oil until you get the consistency you want. Again - this seems to change depending on recipe - but I decided to make mine to pesto consistency.

Very carefully, taste and adjust seasoning as required.

I read that this should keep for 3 days in the fridge - but that it is also freezable. If I'd had enough left after 2 days I would have tried to freeze it in ice-cube trays for easy defrost!