It's super simple -- thus the need for really good ingredients.

The classical recipe uses:

Raw Marcona almonds, garlic, bread (only the white part, no crust, as an aid for thicker texture, so it's not completely necessary), water, olive oil, white vinegar, salt. That's for the base cold soup.

For toppings, it's usually some roasted almonds, cured ham and grapes, but probably the actual original recipe wasn't that fancy.

The concept is to combine the subtle acidity of the dash of vinegar with something sweet and something salty, so you can go really wild here in terms of combinations.

For 120 g of almonds I used one large garlic clove and half a melon (only the flesh of course) instead of water. Half of it (so, one quarter melon) I just added to the other ingredients and blended them to help with the thickness so I could use less bread. The rest of the half melon, I blended it separately and then filtered the juice, then added it and blended the whole thing. In total, all this yielded almost three plates like the one in the picture. Extra virgin olive oil is a must, doesn't need a lot really, just a quarter of a cup or less even. Vinegar is a matter of taste, usually a couple of tablespoons are enough, but the melon, cherries, etc. may require a little extra.

Once everything is thoroughly blended, some people like it even thinner and run it through a colander to remove even the finest pieces of almond and other solids.

It's important to use cold ingredients and to serve it cold from the fridge in any case. The toppings are added only right before serving.

This is not a recipe that's native from where I'm from, and I only tried it for the first time a few years ago. But it's become extremely popular among chefs and in many modern restaurants here the dish has now evolved from a cold soup to a cold sauce of sorts that they serve with stuff like vinegar-cured mackerel.

#cookstr