Name: ‘Spicy Paste’ (Acili Ezme)
Prep time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h 45 min
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Turkish
Ingredients: pul biber (Aleppo pepper) or other chilli flakes (see note); juice of ½ lemon; 60 ml (2 fl oz/¼ cup) extra virgin olive oil; 1 tablespoon pomegranate molasses (available from Turkish or other Middle Eastern food shops, some supermarkets and online); 2 large handfuls flat-leaf (Italian) parsley, very finely chopped; a few mint sprigs, very finely chopped; 1 handful chopped walnuts, to serve; 1 tablespoon tatli biber salçasi (mild Turkish chilli paste) (see note); 1 long green capsicum (pepper), seeded and diced; 1 green chilli, seeded and diced; 2 garlic cloves, crushed; 1 teaspoon sumac; 1 red onion, finely diced; 2 large tomatoes, blanched, peeled, seeded and diced; ½ teaspoon salt

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy
Ready in
1 hr 45

Appears in

Istanbul Cult Recipes

By Pomme Larmoyer

Published 2015

About

Another very common version of a rather spicy meze is ezme, a very, very finely chopped salad. The smoother paste version of this dish calls for each ingredient to be cut into very small pieces. The pul biber found in this recipe, often used to season dishes in Turkey, is made from chillies that have had their stems and seeds removed, before being sun-dried then crushed. For a variation, try piment d’Espelette (Espelette pepper), which is produced in the Basque region of France, in place of