Syrian Muhammara Dip – المح

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Citizens! The Food Dictator gratefully thanks the amazing @SarahAustin for her tweet singing the praises of our blog — her request for a vegan recipe is gratefully answered with one of My favorite vegan appetizers.

Muhammara is an ancient Syrian dip recipe that deserves to be far better known. Peppers, walnuts, and pomegranate molasses combine with spices and olive oil to create one of the most healthful — and delicious — dips on the planet.

The name itself is a description: muhammara comes from the Arabic root for “red,” referring directly to the dish’s deep reddened color. One of the earliest documented references to it appears in Khayr al-Din al-Asadi’s 1981 encyclopedia of Aleppo, which describes it as crumbled ka’ak (a Syrian ring-shaped bread) blended with pomegranate molasses, walnuts, peppers, and oil — recognizably the same dish served today, even if every home and restaurant in the Levant has its own particular ratio of ingredients. Aleppo itself is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth, and the dish’s association with the city runs deep enough that the peppers used to make it are simply known as Aleppo peppers around the world.

Muhammara originated in Aleppo, Syria, where the famous Aleppo (or Halaby) peppers are grown — an area now sadly savaged by a vicious civil war. That conflict has done real, lasting damage to the pepper’s home cultivation; displaced farmers have relocated across the border, and much of what’s sold internationally as “Aleppo pepper” today is actually grown in Turkey rather than Syria itself, a genuinely bittersweet irony for an ingredient named after a city it can now barely be sourced from. The pepper’s significance was formally recognized when it was added to Slow Food’s Ark of Taste, an international catalogue of foods at risk of disappearing. Turkey’s own claim to the dish runs deep as well — in 2022, the city of Gaziantep secured an official geographical indication for its own version of muhammara from the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office, and a related but distinct version called acuka is served across western Turkey, more often as a breakfast condiment than a proper meze. Whichever city ultimately deserves the credit, the dish spread throughout the Levant during the Ottoman era and has remained a fixture of the mezze table in Syria, Lebanon, and Armenia ever since.

This version of Muhammara is My favorite, coming to you via http://jugalbandi.info — it combines elements from the recipes @ Epicurious, Leite’s Culinaria and Tigers and Strawberries.

Citizens, make a batch of this the next time you want to retire hummus from the center of your table for an evening — the smoky sweetness of the peppers against the tang of pomegranate molasses is a combination that deserves far wider fame than it currently enjoys in the West.

Battle on — the Generalissimo

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Syrian Muhammara Dip

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Ingredients

Units USM Scale 1/2x1x2x3x

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• Toast 1 cup of whole wheat or multigrain bread cubes (torn pita pieces work too) on a skillet until they begin to crispen a bit. Put the toasted bread in a blender jar.
• In the same pan, lightly toast 2/3 cup walnut pieces. Just before taking the walnuts off the pan, add 1/2 tsp cumin seeds, heat them up just for a second, and add them to the blender jar with 2 tsp aleppo pepper flakes (note that paprika, ancho or deghi/kashmiri chilli powder are good substitutes) plus 2 cups chopped roasted red bell peppers (about 4 large bell peppers)
• Grind to a coarse paste.
• Add 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil, 3/4 to 1 tsp hot chilli sauce (such as Sriracha or Tabasco), salt to taste, 1 tbsp concentrated tomato paste (or lemon juice) and 2 tbsp pomegranate molasses (available in ethnic markets, or substitute a combo of dark balsamic vinegar and honey)
• Stir everything together. Adjust seasonings and garnish with walnuts. Serve as a dip, or as a spread.

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• Prep Time: 0 hours
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