Mexican Salsas and North African Harisa
Inspired by Kyla Wazana’s post on harisa, in my ongoing quest to explore connections between Mediterranean and Mexican cooking, I finally got around to making some to see how it compared to Mexican salsas.
Now just what harisa was turned out to be a tad problematic. Kyla’s recipe specified dried chiles, anaheim peppers, fresh coriander, ground cumin, ground coriander, olive oil and lemon juice. Rooting around in my cookbooks that dealt with the food of North Africa, I found that Clifford Wright assigned harisa to Tunisia, while Paula Wolfert and Kitty Wolf gave Moroccan recipes. And Farid Zadi referred mainly to commercial brands that he thought had spread in response to tourism.
The common ingredient and base of harisa appears to be dried red chiles. These are softened in water, blended with a variety of seasonings, including salt, garlic, cumin, coriander fresh and dried, mint, lemon and olive oil. To my ignorant eye, the resultant paste appears to be kept sealed with a layer of olive oil for several months.
I explained the project to Emilia who works for me. She whips up a salsa roja of toasted, soaked red chiles and tomatillos every week.
I said I wanted mild dried chiles (guajillos) softened in water. “Oh Señora, shouldn’t they be toasted first?” she asked. No I said, noting here the first difference. Toasting red chiles before soaking is standard operating procedure in this part of Mexico.
When I got to the blending stage, it was “Oh Señora, don’t you need tomates (tomatillos)?” In central Mexico these are used to give body and a certain acidity to a red sauce.
So far as Emilia was concerned harissa was a world away from a salsa roja. I had to agree. The lack of tomatillos made a much denser sauce, the taste of olive oil came through loud and clear.
Here’s the salsa on the left, the harisa on the right. The similar color makes them look alike but the taste and texture are quite different. The harisahas a mayonnaise-like suavity.
If harisa is to be compared to a Mexican preparation, it seems much closer to an adobo. The line between salsas and adobos is more than a little vague but Ricardo Muñoz, author of the Diccionario enciclopedico de gastronomia mexicana puts it at the addition of vinegar to adobos. They are also used more as marinades and tend to be denser than salsas.
So back to globalization. Is harisa an independent invention in North Africa, thought up once they had chiles? Or did returning migrants to New Spain suggest that chiles could be used for color, thickening, as well as piquancy and flavor? I really don’t thing we have a clue.
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Apart from the use of chilli, I can’t see much in common I’m afraid.
One thing to consider is that in Medieval Arabic cookery the term “Sals” (from the Romance “Salsa”) was used for thick sauces. It has been suggested that this indicates that not all transferance of culinary techniques and recipes was in one direction. Charles Perry gives a number of recipes, which vary a lot, but all are thickened in some way. In some cases this achieved by the use of nuts, toasted bread, mastic, oil or garlic.
The recipes are quite varied, but in at least one case if you tossed in some New World chillies you would produce a Harissa like sauce. “Sals” has been dropped from modern Arabic and “Harissa” is derived from “harasa”, to pound. Not that I am suggesting that modern sauces like Harissa are derived from European sources (!), just that it is an interesting idea to consider.
Hi Adam, Sorry to be so long getting back to you. I’m not sure I follow the logic of your argument. I’m not sure that names always move in tandem with recipes or techniques. I think there is sometimes slipping and sliding.
But I do see similarities particularly between a Mexican adobo and harissa.
Technique. An adobo consists of chiles ground to a paste with spices and or herbs and or alliums and an acid, in this case usually vinegar, and sometimes with olive oil as well. Harissa seems to be chiles ground to a paste with spices and or herbs and or alliums and an acid, in this case usually lemon plus olive oil.
Texture and taste. The oil makes the harissa more unctuous but the thickness is about the same. The taste minus the olive oil is about the same.
Uses. Adobos are usually used as a marinade that then turns into the sauce. Harissa appears to have more uses but perhaps that’s because it is playing the role of salsa and adobo.
Independent invention? Could well be. These are universal kinds of ingredients. But similar? Yes, I think so.
Sorry Rachel I didn’t explain myself very well. As you say, I am not saying that they are not similar, just that I can’t see how the two are related other then being similar due to shared ingredients.
As I suggested, they might have a shared ancestor in some of the Arabic/Med. sauces, but I’m not sure how direct a link it would be.
One question. Wine vinegar is obviously post-Spanish contact in Mexico, but what about other souring agents? Fruit “vinegars”? Are these pre-colonial or post-colonial copies of wine vinegar?
An example of a medieval Arabic (14th C) given in Charles Perry’s translation of “The Description of Familiar Foods” lists the ingredients as:
Garlic, olive oil, pepper, salt, parsley,caraway seeds, mint, rue, cinnamon mixed with the juice of green lemons (potential these are limes) or vinegar.
Add Chiles to this and I wonder if you would end up with an adobos, a harissa or something else again.
In an essay on the topic Perry mentions that the essential feature of these sauces was thick, smooth texture.
Harissa could be decended from these sauces or an independent invention, not enough data to tell.
Hi Adam, That makes it lots clearer. No I’m not sure what the connection might be if there even is one. What seems to me clearer and clearer is that harisa and adobo have the same structure. I need to think about this for a couple of days and then I will post again. I am so grateful for your comments. This is just the kind of intellectual exchange I would love to engender in this blog,
Rachel
IN the colonial period and today too Mexico has a lot of fruit vinegars. Whether these date back to prehispanic days, it’s impossible to tell. Pineapple, for example, would have been available but we have no evidence one way or another about whether it was actually used.
As to the Perry recipe, it would rather depend on the proportions, wouldn’t it? In an adobo the chile is the main thickening agent.
No comments on the food by early Spanish arrivals? I guess that even if this was so then vinegar would likely pass by un-mentioned.
Proportion is important. The Perry recipes uses 5 heads (!!! cloves?) of garlic, 3 dirhams of oil (about 9 gms I think), 1.5 dirhams of caraway, 0.5 dirham pepper, 1 dirham cinnamon (three sprigs rue, mint, bunch of parsley). Green lemon juice/vinegar to cover.
So very little oil and more a paste of spiced and herbed garlic or maybe something like a salsa verde?
I think there might be some illumination in looking at this discussion through the lens of evolutionary niche theory.
“So back to globalization. Is harisa an independent invention in North Africa, thought up once they had chiles? Or did returning migrants to New Spain suggest that chiles could be used for color, thickening, as well as piquancy and flavor? I really don’t thing we have a clue.”
I do not believe it is an independent invention in the sense “wow, we have these ingredients, now let’s make something up”.
I think it’s a transference, using new ingredients to substitute for old ones into an already existing category of table and cooking relishes. I started to write something about this, I’ll try to dig it up. Prior to chile peppers and tomatoes a tendency to prefer reddish colored table relishes existed.
As far as Paula Wolfer assigning harissa to Morocco, in her book she calls it Tunisian and via private correspondence she says it entered Morocco via tourism. And Moroccan cooking in general is not piquant, they never embraced the chile pepper the way it was in Tunisia and regionally in Algeria.
I think if Kitty Morse were asked about the existence of “Moroccan” harissa she would probably agree that it entered via tourist demand or Moroccans returning from France where they’re is a sort of “Pan-Magrhebine” culture.
I found this 17th century English description of Moorish Food (not sure what part of North Africa sadly). Interesting use of chilli in a salad dressing.
“Their Salating is Lettuce, Endive, Cardus, Parsley, Apium, and other sweet Herbs, Onions, Cucumbers of several kinds, some about a Yard in length, and two or three inches thick, and hairy, this is esteemed the wholsomest), Radishes, Fumatas, or Apples of Love, all which they will cut, and put oil, vinegar, and salt, with some red Pepper: This Salate they eat with Bread.”
Harissa as a salad dressing?
It could be sweet red pepper or red pepper flakes or ground red pepper, no necessarily harissa???
I would be very interested in a bibliography of references to Moorish cooking in English cookery books.
A similar hot sauce is made here in central Africa, using red peppers… Always on the table and a ‘substitute for salt.
Wonder if this will post!!
It posted! Perhaps because I am in Spain, not Mexico.