Cooking Corner by Various Authors

Sriracha sauce, once an obscure chile, sugar and garlic paste from a Thai fishing village, is now the 800-pound fire-breathing gorilla of condiments. Ubiquitous in Thai, Vietnamese and Chinese eateries, it's elbowing aside salsas in some taco stands and is forging inroads into Italian trattorias.

Another fiery import, harissa, is also breaking out of its original ethnic enclave and entering the wider culinary world. In Southern California, this North African mix of chiles, garlic and olive oil has journeyed from Moroccan restaurants like Marrakesh, in upscale La Jolla, to Cafe Chloe, a French bistro in downtown San Diego.

If harissa sounds foreign, Mourad Laoukili notes that few Southern Californians find the fiery flavor unfamiliar. "With the large Latino community here," said Laoukili, Marrakesh's manager, "Southern Californians are used to spicy food. Most of our customers like harissa."

Harissa, though, lags behind sriracha in popularity. Huy Fong Foods, the Rosemead, Calif., company that makes the most popular sriracha, annually sells 10 million bottles. The clear plastic squeeze bottles, with a distinctive rooster on the label, are everywhere.

Is success spoiling sriracha? Should harissa even try to emulate sriracha's runaway sales? Can a hot sauce become too hot?

Sriracha wasn't always the cocky king of tongue-blistering condiments. Twenty-five years ago, it was a humble dip for crab mainly found in Gulf of Siam fishing villages. Authentic sriracha, is sweet and spicy, with a hint of sourness.

The sauce's electric red color and taste-bud-jolting heat are due to red chiles, pounded into a paste and blended with garlic, sugar and vinegar. The yin-and-yang interplay of sweet and fiery is at sriracha's seductive heart. Thai versions of the sauce are balanced, with subtlety and flair.

Sriracha addicts, who run the gamut from professional chefs to amateur snackers, also want it on more and more foods. Huy Fong's distinctive bottles are de rigueur in Vietnamese "pho" restaurants, while some diners squirt the stuff on hash browns and scrambled eggs in place of ketchup.

Like sriracha, harissa is a red-chile-based paste that can make mouths water. If these sauces are brothers, though, they are far from identical twins.

While some sriracha sauces gets their fire from jalapeno peppers, many harissas are made with cayenne peppers. Smoky and piquant, it perks up milder foods like flatbread, white fish and chicken.

Sold in cans and tubes, harissa is intimately associated with Tunisian and Moroccan food. "It's like wasabi is for Asians," said Laoukili, the Moroccan restaurant manager. This sauce, like wasabi, can vary from region to region. Tunisian harissa is often hotter than the Moroccan variety and is sometimes served with sliced tomatoes.

There's also a French version — or at least a rendition served at Cafe Chloe, the French bistro in San Diego.

This is a sweet and tangy dipping sauce for the house fries.

"We just wanted to spice our ketchup up," said Katie Grebow, Cafe Chloe's chef.

She first experimented with the harissa-enriched ketchup when the restaurant opened in 2004. This sauce, like sriracha, seems to have an addictive nature. Recently, Grebow increased the amount of harissa in the mix: "A lot of people said they wanted more."

 

SESAME SHRIMP WITH GINGER CHILE SAUCE

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

2 tablespoons Asian sesame oil

1 tablespoon minced garlic

2 tablespoons soy sauce

24 extra-large or jumbo shrimp with tails

Cilantro or parsley, for garnish

Ginger Chile Sauce:

2 tablespoons Sriracha sauce (or to taste)

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon Asian sesame oil

3/4 cup mayonnaise

Yields 8 servings.

In a medium bowl, combine 2 tablespoons rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons sesame oil, garlic and 2 tablespoons soy sauce. Add shrimp; cover and refrigerate for 1 to 4 hours.

Heat grill to medium heat.

Remove shrimp from marinade and skewer on bamboo skewers that have been soaked in water for 20 minutes.

Grill shrimp skewers for 3 to 4 minutes per side, until shrimp are just opaque. Remove shrimp from skewers and arrange on a platter.

To make Ginger Chile Sauce: Combine all sauce ingredients and whisk together until smooth. Cover and refrigerate until serving time, up to 3 days. To serve, spoon sauce into a bowl or hollowed-out bell pepper and place on tray with the warm shrimp. Garnish platter with cilantro or parsley.

 

MOROCCAN SPICED OLIVES

2 cups (10 ounces) green olives (with pits) in brine, such as picholine or Cerignola, lightly smashed to crack open slightly

4 garlic cloves, sliced

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

2 teaspoons tomato paste

1/3 cup water

2 teaspoons harissa (see note)

3 thyme sprigs

2 thin lemon slices

Yields about 2 cups.

Cover olives with water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil, then drain.

Cook garlic in oil in a 10-inch heavy skillet over medium heat until garlic is golden, about 2 minutes. Add tomato paste and cook, stirring, 1 minute. Stir in water, harissa, thyme and olives, and simmer briskly, stirring occasionally, until liquid is thickened and coats olives, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in lemon slices. Transfer to a shallow dish and marinate, chilled, at least 24 hours.

The olives keep, chilled in an airtight container, for 1 month.

Note: Harissa is sold at Williams-Sonoma.

— Melissa Roberts, Gourmet Magazine, April 2009

Peter Rowe writes about food for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Contact her at peter.rowe@uniontrib.com.

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