Harissa is an North African condiment or chili paste that gives a little zip to a dish. It’s fun to use instead of cocktail sauce and is delicious whisked into broths or soups with as heavy a hand as you like. It’s often used in tagine (a stew or long braise) to give the sauce a dark red, rusty color and a little or a lot of heat. There are many different versions of harissa, they can be smooth, coarse, extra hot, or very garlicky.

An Algerian chef named Michel Anik, whom I worked with at 8 Holyoke in Harvard square, taught me to use sun-dried tomatoes as a sweet concentrated tomato element, which gives the harissa a consistency similar to a thick ketchup or jam.