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Cream of Almond Soup
2 ounces shelled almonds 1 1/2 cups hot water 1 1/2 cups hot milk 1 teaspoon salt Blanch and thoroughly dry the almonds, and grind them through a food chopper, using the nut-butter cutter. Rub this almond butter smooth with the water. Cook in a double boiler twenty minutes, or till the nut butter has thickened the water somewhat. Add the hot milk and salt, and heat together a few minutes.
A plain almond-milk soup of the sort that turns up in early twentieth-century vegetarian cookery, where ground nuts stood in for meat stock and cream. It works, but only if the almonds are ground fine enough to stay in suspension.
- The hinge: grind it finer than you thinkThe soup thickens only because the almond solids are fine enough to disperse and swell. A food processor run several minutes to a true butter, or a high-speed blender with a little of the water, gives a smooth soup; a coarse meal will settle out into grit at the bottom of the bowl.
- The nut-butter cutterA fine cutter sold with hand-cranked food choppers for making nut butters at home. A food processor or blender replaces it entirely.
- QuantitiesTwo ounces of shelled almonds is about 1/3 to 1/2 cup, roughly 55 g. The finished soup comes to about three cups, which serves two generously or four as a first course.
- BlanchingThirty seconds in boiling water, then drain and pinch the skins off. Drying matters: damp almonds smear rather than grind, and the skins would speck the finished soup grey.
- SaltA full teaspoon in three cups is assertive by current taste. Add half, then correct at the end once the milk is in.
- The double boilerTwenty minutes over simmering water is right, and it is worth keeping. Almond solids scorch readily over direct heat and the burnt flavour cannot be lifted out. Stir now and then; the mixture will thicken only slightly, to about the body of thin cream.
- ServingServe at once. On standing the solids sink, so whisk before ladling, and reheat gently rather than boiling. A little white pepper, a scrape of nutmeg, or celery salt suits it if the plain version reads as thin.