Food & Wine
Smoked almond soup
This delicious soup brings together the rich, original flavours of smoked almonds and creates a delicious starter (or meal in its own right). Try it today!
Serves: 4
Ingredients:
- ¼ cup flour
- ¼ cup rice
- 1 tablespoon tea leaves
- 5g sage
- 200g blanched almonds
- 1 litre well-flavoured chicken stock
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 large onions, sliced
- ¼ cup white port or dry sherry
- Salt to taste
- 8 baguette slices, to serve
- 125g haloumi cheese, to serve
- Freshly ground black pepper, to serve
- Fresh sage, to serve
Method:
- To begin, prepare the smoked almonds. Line a disposable aluminium roasting dish with tinfoil. In the bottom of the dish, combine the flour, rice, tealeaves and sage.
- Place a rack over the mixture and cover with a piece of tinfoil.
- Pierce it in several places to let the smoke come through but not the nuts.
- Heat a dry frying pan over a medium heat and toast the almonds, shaking the pan often, until just starting to colour (about two minutes).
- Spread the almonds over the foil-lined rack. Cover the entire dish loosely with a large piece of foil and seal tightly with the base foil (any gaps and you will have a smoke-scented house). Place the dish over an element heated to medium and leave for 10 minutes.
- Remove from the heat and keep covered while cooling.
- Put the smoked almonds in a blender or food processor and blend to a fine meal.
- Pour in half the stock and blend well. Strain into a bowl through a fine sieve, pushing the almond milk through with the back of a spoon. Place the squeezed nuts back into the blender and add a further 250ml of stock and blend well again.
- Squeeze through the sieve again and repeat the process with remaining 250ml of stock.
- Reserve almond milk and discard the nut meal.
- Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy based saucepan over a low heat.
- Add the sliced onions and cook gently for 30 minutes until very soft and just golden.
- Increase the heat and pour in the port or sherry.
- Bring to the boil then add the reserved almond milk.
- Heat gently then season to taste with salt.
- Heat the grill and toast one side of the baguette slices.
- Turnover and top with slices of haloumi and grill until melted.
- To serve, divide the smoked almond soup among four soup bowls, top each with two haloumi toasts, a grind of black pepper and a few fresh sage leaves.
Wow, this sounds incredibly delicious? Have you ever tried almond soup before? What’s your favourite soup, and do you have a recipe to share? Let us know in the comments.
Written by Fiona Smith. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz.
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