No, I haven’t been eating only nachos and whiskey for the last few months, but it’s been a weird food time. I did apparently trim an inch off my waist, which is nice, except that now I need new pants.

But anyway, tonight is all about: romesco.

If you’ve never had it, I’m sorry, but we can rectify that soon. If you have, your idea of righteous romesco may vary a bit from mine (every recipe is a bit different), but you know it’s a Catalan sauce made from nuts, tomatoes, peppers, bread, garlic, and vinegar that’s delicious on…well, on just about everything: vegetables, shrimp, chicken, grilled bread, fish, name it.

It’s actually good for you, too! Small amounts of healthy nuts, extra virgin olive oil, no cheese, no other fats, and so satisfying.

I love it as a dipping sauce for poached shrimp. The Spanish, though, have a neat ritual of charring green onions on the grill, then dipping them with their fingers into warm bowls of the stuff, and that’s what I decided to go for tonight. Finger food.

I didn’t have spring onions, but I did have some fat, beautiful leeks. Tip: When you’re going to grill an onion of any sort, it helps to keep the root end intact, so they don’t fall apart. I just trimmed off some of the long roots and the woody green leaves, then sliced the leeks lengthwise in quarters and washed them in a big bowl of cold water (plunging them up and down helps divest leeks of their mud).

A quick coating of extra virgin olive oil, and they were ready for the grill pan, which I used to char the hell out of them. Yum.

The sauce is the key, and what you add to yours will depend a bit on taste and a bit on the state of your pantry. Mine went something like this:

• handful of toasted, skinned hazelnuts
• small handful of toasted almonds (you can use on nut or the other, but I happened to have both on hand)
• one beautiful tomato
• a couple of small slices of toasted ciabatta
• 2 jarred piquillo peppers
• one ancho chile, softened in some hot water
• sherry vinegar

Basically, blend it all up in the food processor, add some olive oil, salt, and pepper, and you’re done. It’s not a clingy dip — more of a dolloping sauce. The texture will be thick and a little nubby, not smooth like a mayonnaise (though now that I think of it, I bet it’d be really good in mayonnaise), the color a rich, rich mahogany. The sauce should have a little kick to it, but in my experience, anyway, it shouldn’t be spicy.

My lovely dinner, then: two slices of that same ciabatta, rubbed with some olive oil and grilled; a tangled pile of charred leek wedges; and a heaping spoonful of romesco. OK, several heaping spoonfuls.

Trust me, you’ll be rummaging through your fridge looking for things to slather with your sauce. Tomorrow I’m doing asparagus.