Summer Series #9: Almonds are forever

As soon as summer arrives, a chilled glass of almond milk with soft bits of ground almonds at the bottom is simply refreshment paradise. In the south of Italy, where almonds traditionally abound, this is known as "almond milk", even though it contains no milk at all. The name poetically refers to the whitish color of the drink, as pale as a moon. Traditionally, at Christmas or Easter, almond sweets are lovingly prepared in the family, starting with the "almond fish"that is the signature dessert at my aunt's. After having tasted it religiously for years (the fish even got shipped abroad, believe it or not), I was finally given the secret (yet incredibly simple) ingredients and the "recipe". This is heaven, any time of the year, so no need to go crazy over the calendar and wait for December. Actually, as the summer days go happily by our beloved Mediterranean sea, we seem to be eating almonds in a million different shapes and tastes: almond ice cream, amond shave ice, almond sweets and cookies...all directly inherited from the Arabs who populated this area and introduced a wealth of produces here (eggplants, zucchini, sorbet...).

Enough talking - here is the mother of all almond recipes:

Rich Ingredients:

-1 Kg of TOP quality almonds (before buying a whole kilo, do taste one almond and make sure that you are buying proper stuff: the key to the success of this dessert is the high quality of all the ingredients)

-1 shot of grappa or another fragrant and strong liqueur

-1/2 Kg of granulated sugar

How to:

To peel the almonds, boil them in hot water, then with patience and asbestos hands, peel them while hot (but not piping hot, obviously). Then put all the ingredients in the blender and mix away. The final paste is much coarser than the shop-bought hyper sweet one. For Christmas, in Italy we use a fish-shaped (the fish being a symbol for Christ) mould in which we press the paste. Sometimes we press one layer and then a thin one of jam or chocolate, and then top it up with the rest of the almond paste. This is up to you really, but in any case, the final result will be very sweet, with a pungent final taste of "sour" almonds and liqueur to sharpen things up. If meant for a young crowd, I will definitely leave the liqueur out of the equation.

Credits: Van Gogh