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Nobel Prize Award Raised to Nearly $1 Million for 2023

FILE - The Nobel medal in physiology or medicine presented to Charles M. Rice is displayed, Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020, during a ceremony in New York. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - The Nobel medal in physiology or medicine presented to Charles M. Rice is displayed, Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020, during a ceremony in New York. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP, File)
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Nobel Prize Award Raised to Nearly $1 Million for 2023

FILE - The Nobel medal in physiology or medicine presented to Charles M. Rice is displayed, Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020, during a ceremony in New York. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP, File)
FILE - The Nobel medal in physiology or medicine presented to Charles M. Rice is displayed, Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2020, during a ceremony in New York. (Angela Weiss/Pool Photo via AP, File)

Winners of this year's Nobel Prizes will get an extra 1 million crowns, taking the total financial reward to 11 million Swedish crowns ($986,000), the Nobel Foundation, which administers the awards, said on Friday.

The prize money has been adjusted up and down in recent years and the award-givers said it was increasing the amount this year to reflect the Foundation's stronger financial position, Reuters reported.

In 2012, prize money was reduced from 10 million crowns to 8 million as the Foundation looked to shore up its finances. The prize amount was increased to 9 million in 2017 and in 2020 to 10 million - where it was prior to 2012.

Over the last decade, however, the Swedish crown has lost around 30% of its value against the euro meaning the most recent increase in the value of the prize won't leave winners outside Sweden feeling much richer.

In 2013, the prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace - which were first awarded in 1901 - were worth around 1.2 million dollars, despite the cut in the Swedish currency sum to 8 million crowns.

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is the first of this year's prizes and will be announced on Oct. 2 followed by Physics, Chemistry, Literature and Peace on the following days.

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Chili Paste Heats Up Dishes at Northeastern Tunisia’s Harissa Festival

Chahida Boufaied, owner of Dar Chahida Lel Oula, prepares the Harissa in her house in Nabeul, Tunisia, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Ons Abid)
Chahida Boufaied, owner of Dar Chahida Lel Oula, prepares the Harissa in her house in Nabeul, Tunisia, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Ons Abid)
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Chili Paste Heats Up Dishes at Northeastern Tunisia’s Harissa Festival

Chahida Boufaied, owner of Dar Chahida Lel Oula, prepares the Harissa in her house in Nabeul, Tunisia, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Ons Abid)
Chahida Boufaied, owner of Dar Chahida Lel Oula, prepares the Harissa in her house in Nabeul, Tunisia, Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Ons Abid)

For years, Tunisians have been picking bright red peppers, combining them with garlic, vinegar and spices and turning them into a saucy spread called harissa. The condiment is a national staple and pastime, found in homes, restaurants and food stalls throughout the coastal North African nation.

Brick-red, spicy and tangy, it can be scooped up on bread drizzled with olive oil or dabbed onto plates of eggs, fish, stews or sandwiches. Harissa can be sprinkled atop merguez sausages, smeared on savory pastries called brik or sandwiches called fricassées, The Associated Press reported.
In Nabeul, the largest city in Tunisia’s harissa-producing Cap Bon region, local chef and harissa specialist Chahida Boufayed called it “essential to Tunisian cuisine.”
“Harissa is a love story,” she said at a festival held in honor of the chili paste sauce in the northeastern Tunisian city of Nabeul earlier this month. “I don’t make it for the money.”
Aficionados from across Tunisia and the world converged on the 43-year-old mother’s stand to try her recipe. Surrounded by strings of drying baklouti red peppers, she described how she grows her vegetables and blends them with spices to make harissa.
The region’s annual harissa festival has grown in the two-plus years since the United Nations cultural organization, UNESCO, recognized the sauce on a list of items of intangible cultural heritage, said Zouheir Belamin, the president of the association behind the event, a Nabeul-based preservation group. He said its growing prominence worldwide was attracting new tourists to Tunisia, specifically to Nabeul.
UNESCO in 2022 called harissa an integral part of domestic provisions and the daily culinary and food traditions of Tunisian society, adding it to a list of traditions and practices that mark intangible cultural heritage.
Already popular across North Africa as well as in France, the condiment is gaining popularity throughout the world from the United States to China.
Seen as sriracha’s North African cousin, harissa is typically prepared by women who sun-dry harvested red peppers and then deseed, wash and ground them. Its name comes from “haras” – the Arabic verb for “to crush” – because of the next stage in the process.
The finished peppers are combined it with a mixture of garlic cloves, vinegar, salt, olive oil and spices in a mortar and pestle to make a fragrant blend. Variants on display at Nabeul’s Jan. 3-5 festival used cumin, coriander and different spice blends or types of peppers, including smoked ones, to create pastes ranging in color from burgundy to crimson.
“Making harissa is an art. If you master it, you can create wonders,” Boufayed said.