Harissa Heaven

Diana Henry uses the versatile North African spice paste to add a new dimension to sausage rolls, sardines and slow-cooked aubergines.

- Diana Henry

My first taste of harissa, the chilli paste used in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, wasn’t in North Africa but in France. During a year au pairing in Bordeaux, I soon discovered the small square – at one end of the Rue Sainte-Catherine – that was home to North African cafés and restaurants. The air there was full of the smell of cigarettes, mint tea, cumin and griddled lamb, and you could buy North African groceries. I fell in love with the packaging for harissa, sold in tubes or tins as colourful as Moroccan tiles. Harissa isn’t considered a wildly exotic ingredient these days, and supermarkets sell their own-brand versions, but I still buy the tubes, or tins, made by Le Phare Bon, always emblazoned with a picture of a bright, beautiful lighthouse.

The mother of the family I was living with made lamb couscous one night, a dish that was like a brothy version of the Irish stew I’d grown up with, but harissa transformed it. Monique put a big spoonful in a bowl and diluted it with some of the broth and a little olive oil. It was no longer Irish.