Four years ago I honestly never could have expected that I'd be around for this day. It's Beau's 24th birthday! Fun fact, Beau's birthday is two days before our anniversary, so it all usually just gets rolled into one big celebration time of reminiscing. If you're keeping track, yes, that means he was 19 when we first met, which is disgustingly cute,, and if you scroll far enough back on our Instagram you can find pictures from back then. But I don't *fully* recommend doing that because we're both *fully* cuter and more stylish nowadays in our post-college life. Just take my word that the stuff is out there somewhere.

So a little bit ago we both just woke up and were like "Wow, holy crap, we've been together four years, how did that happen?" I literally have no idea. It's been a fast and event-filled four years for us. Over that time, a pattern has kind of emerged for how we spend our respective birthdays. I'm more the type to prefer a small party with some friends, and Beau's more the type to prefer seven meals all at a different restaurant and/or fly to New York, which we've done for 2 of the last 3 of his birthdays. We're sticking to New Orleans this year, so I guess we're about to head out on our restaurant marathon. Pray for us and our appetites.

The first stop he'll want to make, if I may wager a guess, is our favorite little café that happens to be right across the street, Sneaky Pickle. We've written about them before because, like I said, they're our favorite and I'm not exaggerating. Our friend Ben is the chef and owner, and he's always changing the menu, and it's always amazing. A couple weeks ago we stopped in and had some food that frankly may have changed my life forever, some goat ribs covered in a romesco sauce. And that, babes, is how we got started thinking about today's recipe.

So I don't know how familiar you are with romesco sauce, but I was not very familiar with it before this life changing meal. Well, now I'm incredibly familiar with it, to the point that Beau and I are considering inviting it to thrupple with us because, hey, Emma Watson is kissing a buffalo on the big screen so it looks like anything goes in 2017.

I'll break it down if you're as in the dark as I once was: red pepper, nuts, garlic. UNH. For ours, we also wanted to include some oven roasted spring onion we got in our Saint Box from St. Roch Forage, which we are LIVING FOR. Anyway, this sauce is friggin' dope and we've made a bunch of it, so we're brainstorming a lot of different ways to use it.

While the spoon to mouth option could work, some other great methods of serving are:

On a flatbread or pizza in place of red sauce
On a sandwich when you wanna be a real bad girl, or impress the shit out of your kid
As a pasta sauce
As a topping for lamb, goat ribs (!!), or a good charred steak
All over your body while you binge watch reruns of GIRLS - this may only apply to us

Spring Onion Romesco

adapted from Bon Appetit

takes: 25 minutes // makes: 1 quart(ish)

2 - 4 spring onions*
3 - 5 cloves garlic, peeled and kept whole
2 tablespoons butter, melted
2 fire roasted red pepper
1/2 cup slivered almond
1/4 cup tomato sauce
2 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
Juice of one lemon
salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 425 degrees and line a large baking pan (with a lip to prevent oil spill over) with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Place the spring onions and garlic on the baking pan and coat with the melted butter and a sprinkle of salt. Roast for 12 - 15 minutes, until the spring onions are wilted and slightly charred. Remove from heat and set aside.
While the spring onions roast, combine the remaining ingredients (roasted red pepper through the salt + pepper to taste in the ingredients list above) in a blender.
Once the spring onions have roasted, give them a coarse chop and add them along with the garlic to the blender. Pulse until smooth, and enjoy! Check out our Notes on serving this sauce below.

Notes

OK so our spring onions were freaking massive (about 1 1/2 feet in length), so we only used 2. However, if you've got itty bitty spring onions or if you're substituting scallions, you may want to use up to 6.
This stays good up to one week in the fridge in an airtight container!