Nearly a decade ago, when we were still living in sometimes-sunny California, we embarked on a road trip from Sunnyvale to San Diego.

Being vegetarian foodies, we were both always on the lookout for new foods to try. We tried to avoid the same-old, same-old cliches of French fries (there are only so many French fries a vegetarian can survive through their travels!) and pizza (even the best napolitana in the world can taste stale eaten too many times). Mock-meats never took my fancy (I tend to be biased against foods that appear to be overly processed). So travelling and deciding what to eat was both exciting and also posed challenges.

An old favourite remained Middle Eastern, with its abundance of veggie options and honestly very refreshing and balanced. Think falafel, hummus, baba ganoush, tabbouleh and more. It felt like a privilege to have an entire menu full of foods that catered to me and my needs!

Back to San Diego. After a long day, we chanced upon a place to eat called “Fattoush”. It was middle-eastern, and appeared to have a number of vegetarian options. As you can see, our criteria were fairly simple! The place was run by an elderly Syrian couple. We were pleasantly surprised to find a number of options that piqued our curiosity. In order to try as much as we could, we ordered a “veggie platter”.

The platter included a number of dips we’d never tried before, including toum, a Lebanese garlic dip, and muhamarra – the star of this story.

A bright red dip that I’d never tasted, seen or even heard of before, my tastebuds were blown away by this dip that seemed to be spicy, sweet, tangy and more, all at once. It was amazing and I needed more of it in my life!

The elderly couple running the place was more than happy to tell me more about the food and answer all my questions. Muhamarra is a red capsicum based dip, where the capsicum are roasted (preferably over fire) until blackened, and then peeled, and blended with a whole bunch of other goodies like Aleppo peppers (regional red chillies), pomegranate molasses and walnuts. Obviously, I couldn’t leave their restaurant without a big parcel of the “red gold”, so I parcelled a huge box to lug back to Sunnyvale with me, that I proceeded to use with everything under the sun (including as a spread inside a masala dose!) The couple was also kind enough to give us a box of regional sweets.

Since then, I have scoured the Interwebs for versions of muhamarra and then come up with a version that uses ingredients that we likely already have in our Indian kitchens, with a couple of optional add-ins.

Ingredients:

• 3 red capsicums (just does not come out the same with other colours), roasted and peeled
• 1 tbsp dhaniya, roasted
• 1 tbsp jeera, roasted
• 1/4 cup walnuts, roasted
• 2 byadegi chillies, roasted (adjust to taste)
• honey to your taste (this is meant to substitute the pomegranate molasses).
• 1 tbsp smoked paprika powder
• juice of 1 lime
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp breadcrumbs OR 2 slices of bread (crusty bread works great)
• salt to taste

Roast and cool all ingredients as mentioned above. Blend to a paste (can be coarse if you want, I prefer smooth)

Use generously with roti, dosa, eggs, bread, and everything else under the sun.

Here is muhamarra, the star of any home-made middle-eastern platter in our household.

From then on, every time I travel somewhere or meet someone from a different place or culture, I make it a point to learn something new about food from their culture. I often find gems that can’t be found online.