Harissa, with a twist

I'm not a fan of overly spicy food. I'll say this now, and am ready for the brickbats, I'm not overly keen on Indian food or anything spicy at all. Well I say that, but since I asked for a Cuisinart spice grinder last Christmas, life has changed. I can now make curries and spicy food as hot or as mild as I want. I have even converted my husband to thai style curries, even though he said he was a coconut hater.

Well I was looking for something different to do with some sea bass that was lurking in the freezer and found inspiration from Yotam Ottollenghi. I have the books "Plenty" and Jerusalem" and found a wonderful recipe for fish in harissa. Except that I was not keen on all the ingredients. So I decided to modify the original Yotam recipe as follows:

1 red pepper roasted until the skin is black
1/2teaspoom of coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon of coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon of caraway seeds
1 small red onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 tablespoon of runny honey
1/2 teaspoon of dried rose petals

Now this is where the customisation comes into play, add as many birds eye chillies as you can dare. Remember however that this gets hotter over time so you might want to moderate accordingly.

You need to pan roast the coriander, cumin and caraway until they start to give off their aroma. Then either tip into a spice grinder, or a pestle and mortar and grind to a fine powder.

Roast the pepper over an open flame until blackened.If you do not have a gas flame then grill turning regularly until the pepper is black. Put in a bowl and leave to cool. Whilst cooling, cook the onion, chillies and garlic until softened.

Add the cooled red pepper and onion mix to a grinder or food processor, together with the spice mix, honey and rose petals. Blitz to a paste and use if your own favourite recipe.