Almond is an excellent ally in the kitchen, because it is versatile and suitable for numerous preparations.
The almond is recognized among the traditional Italian agri-food products as a typical Sicilian product, present on the menu from appetizer to dessert, with pastas, bruschettas, salads, breadings, but also ice cream, milk, marzipan, martorana fruit or nougat. As an alternative to the preparations that you can do simply at home, give yourself a Sicilian tour: the show of spring flowering is truly a joy for the eyes.
The almond through the whole menu
Sweet and bitter, crunchy or pasty, light or dark, all almond-based preparations are wonderful. Among the lesser known, there is breading for various fries or for fish and crusted meat: just blend it more or less fine depending on the consistency you want to obtain. During her season, however, it is better to leave her fresh as it is very soft, then peel and peel it and then accompany it with fresh salads or as a side dish for a steamed fish. In desserts, the use is almost infinite, from the best known Marzipan, with almonds, flour, sugar and eggs, used by the Etruscans and Romans as a votive food, until Nougat, whose paternity we still contend with France and Spain.
How to prepare almond milk at home
Making almond milk at home is very simple: simply soak the peeled almonds in boiling water for a day, then pass them with theextractor, or blend them in a blender with very little filtered water. This milk, if boiled, tends to thicken and remember almost one fresh cream, ideal to be used again in salty as a sauce for a ravioli or even for a steamed or roasted steak.
How to use almond flour
Almond flour also has a good one versatility in the kitchen, excellent for cakes and biscuits, where it retains more moisture giving a softness greater than all our desserts. If we are interested in a more bitter taste we should use the almond Ermellina, but be careful: ingested in large quantities it can become toxic to the body.
The almond in the dishes of the great chefs
They could not remain impassive in front of the charm of the almond great chefs as Andrea Berton, who proposed a delicious almond cream with pumpkin, apples and goat milk, or Pino Cuttaia in La Madia di Licata with its masterful almond and basil soup. In short, there is just to indulge in this oily fruit, which is also rich in vitamin E, mineral salts and proteins.
A curiosity about martorana fruit based on almond
There martorana fruit it was created for the first time by the nuns of the Palermo convent dedicated to the noblewoman Eloisa Martorana, hence the name, to honor Roger II of Sicily who visited during the winter, when no other fruit was available. After three centuries of activity, at the end of the sixteenth century an edict of the diocesan Synod of Mazara del Vallo sanctioned the nuns, guilty of an activity that was believed to distract them from the proper religious recollection; in fact, there were many other reasons, so much so that after a few months the Sicilian confectioners' guild acquired the monopoly of the recipe of the nuns with the blessing of the Curia.
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Texts by Giulia Ubaldi
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