Almande, Amandula, Mandorla, Mandel, Mandula, or Almendra…

This small “nut or fruit or seed” probably the most important product after the olive oil talking about Mallorca’s export. Actually Spain is the second country (after USA) considering the production of the ALMONDS – talking around 0.22 million tonnes each year.

The little story started after the 19th century – when the ‘mallorcan wine industry’ had been killed by the phylloxera plague – farmers decided to replace the grapes with some almond trees. Actually the island today is almost fully covered with 5 million plants approx…

No reason why i like it sooo much… (the truth can be find in the cyanide)

Fresh green almond in my salad…

Mature dry toasted almond in my muesli…

Flake for a cake topping…

Or flour as a cake base…

Crunch for mix with icecream…

Oil to garnish my soup…

Liquor in my coffee…

Milk for a mouthwatering sorbet…

Usually people use almonds rather for sweet than for savoury dishes – however it goes heavenly with fish or green vegetable, white-base sauces – this is obvious by the way.

Let me introduce my experience instead…

My main character is the “almond cream” … a little bottle can make miracles. This is nothing else but pure paste with some sugar, glucose and water – likely call as a “butter” cause its really high in monounsaturated fat. Sorry its not good for your diet at all, but not bad if u are vegetarian cause its full in protein. And my intension was to replace the butter in a recipe.

Lets try to make my special almond hollandaise then….

Following a normal method first make a reduction of water, bayleaf, black pepper and some beauty sherry vinegar – with this u season your egg yolks and starting to cook in a “bain marie” whisking continuously like a crazy. When its kind of cooked (but not curdled!!!) u add your melted butter slowly slowly reaching a ‘mayonnaise reaction’. Here i replaced the butter with my local, pure, not toasted almond butter adding little by little corporating in the mixture… believe it or not… was working.

Dont know why i was thinking that i wont have any success with this… the result was beautiful. The structure a little instabil – couldnt keep it for long, but this is pretty much the same with a normal hollandaise as well… And this is not a place of a joke: the flavor was completed.

So after the main procedure i could put my final salad together. A lovely light summer salad from the heart of Palma de Mallorca.

Enjoy my asparagus+squash salad with apricot and fresh green almonds, seasoned with flowers (sage and lemon verbena) and accompanied with my spanish almond hollandaise sauce… :)

p.s. imagine to compare a lobster ravioli with orange essence… or some scallops with jamon crumbs… pffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff