Last month, whilst being on my expedition in Cordoba, I found out about the existence of Mazamorra Cordoba. A cold almond soup. The existence of cold soups has intrigued me for a while now, but to learn about a cold soup that is made out of nuts really tantalised me.
Naturally, as an ambitious soup apprentice, I had to try to recreate this soup myself. And that’s just what I did. Fortunately, it’s not a hugely complex soup to make. Let me share the recipe of the soup and my thoughts about it with you.
Ingredients
- 400grams of stale bread
- 70 grams of almonds
- 1 clove of garlic
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Apple cider vinegar (or white wine vinegar, what ever you prefer)
- Salt & pepper
Steps
- The first thing you want to do is to tear the bread up into little pieces and soak it in a bit of water. Use just enough water to get it nice and soggy, but not so much that the bread starts to float.
- After that you can crush the almonds and garlic in your kitchen machine. Crush it into a fine powder. I believe that officially you have to use blanched almonds for this recipe, but I used unblanched almonds. Do I have a good reason for this? No, not really. I just had these almonds laying around and I couldn’t care to peel off the skin. I don’t think there is a huge difference apart from the colour of the soup in the end.
Warning: don’t let yourself be infatuated by the heavenly aroma that arises from this powder
- Add the soggy bread into the bowl with the almond powder. Let the kitchen machine turn the mixture into a nice silky texture akin to a good humus.
- Finally you can add some high quality olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. How much of these you add is really up to you. They are mostly for flavour, but they can also help to make the soup a bit more liquid. If you are using white wine vinegar, you can also chose to add a bit of lemon juice for a fruity acidity.
Be careful with adding water into the mixture because it can dilute the flavours.
- Put the soup into the fridge and let it cool down completely. After 1-2 hours your soup should be cold. Depending on the volume of your soup of course.
- To garnish the soup, you can add a boiled egg and some serrano ham. We chose to fry the serrano ham (Blasphemous? Maybe. Delicious? Certainly.) Apparently the inhabitants from Cordoba sometimes also add ice cubes to the soup for a bit of a cold twist. We haven’t tried that yet, but feel free to try it 🙂
Review
This soup surprised me a lot in a positive sense. As a mere novice soup apprentice, my frame of reference is still rather small, so I had no idea what to the expect from this soup.
A nut soup? Made primarily from bread? Cold??
So many interesting aspects to this soup that I have not tried before. The closest thing I’ve tried that resembles this soup is the wild English concept of ‘bread sauce’. I tried this two years ago during the traditional UK Christmas meal with my girlfriend’s family. And although the word ‘bread sauce’ might sound like a poorly executed practical joke to the layman, the rules of honesty command me to state that it is actually a delicious, thick, hearty condiment to a roast dinner.
The same goes up for this soup. All individual elements of this soup might sound like a bit of a wild ride, but they come together in a lovely manner. The garlic and the almonds give a nice earthy flavour to the soup, while the bread provides a good body. The vinegar and lemon juice give playful hints of piquancy, and the olive oil adds a rich undertone that binds it all together.
Finally I would say that the cold, boiled egg and the warm crunchy ham on top of the soup are very welcome garnishes. They provide an exciting variance in texture that might otherwise be missing from the soup.
All in all, I very much enjoyed this soup and I expect to make this soup more often this summer.