After years of sharing shelf space in London delis, Sea Sisters and Lamiri Harissa have announced a collaboration that pairs Cornish sardines with Tunisian harissa.
Whole Cornish sardines, caught one mile off the Cornish coast and prepared at Sea Sisters’ Bridport fish cannery, are preserved and marinated in extra virgin olive oil and Lamiri’s Tunisian harissa.
Siblings Sam and Milly Lamiri launched Lamiri Harissa to bring their grandmother’s harissa recipe back to life. Sam Lamiri told FFD that the collaboration had been on the backburner for a while.
“When Sea Sisters first launched, a lot of the delis we supply were raving about them being the first UK cannery. Then I met them at a food fair two years ago and we found that although our products are very different, our brand ethos and approach aligned,” he said.
The initial idea was to create a harissa tuna, but as Sea Sisters was unable to source British tuna that met its ethical standards, they chose sardines instead, inspired by the Tunisian sardine sandwich.
The new conservas is available D2C via both producers’ websites and DELLI.
“We’re doing quite small runs at the moment; we’re using it as an opportunity to introduce Sea Sisters to some of our really good stockists and vice versa,” said Lamiri.
It also forms part of Lamiri’s strategy to branch out beyond harissa.
“Harissa will always be the core of who we are but we have done that now for three plus years and have got to the point where we have earned the legitimacy and authority to speak on what a good harissa is. So now we’re looking at other products, some of which are harissa-infused and others which are Tunisian classics. The ethical side of it is that we feel that Tunisia is massively underrepresented in the UK and Europe.”
This article first appeared in the October-November issue of Fine Food Digest.
