White Garlic Soup with Almonds

From Eat Your Veg, Arthur Potts Dawson, Mitchell Beazley, 2012.

In a small bowl I placed 76g blanched almonds and just covered them with milk. They were then left for an hour to soak.

After the hour I took the almonds out and placed in the milk two slices of white bread that had had the crusts cut off. I cut the bread into smaller pieces to fit into the milk in the bowl.

While the bread was soaking in the milk I peeled two garlic cloves and added them to the blender and gave them a whirl. The bread had soaked up the milk by now so it was added and given another whirl to blend it all to a paste. Keeping the blender going I added about ¼ cup olive oil, a tablespoon cider vinegar and 150ml water. The mixture by now resembled a thin cream. It went into the refrigerator to chill.

Before serving some almond pieces were dry fried until they became a little brown. They were sprinkled over the surface of the soup when it had been poured into bowls.

I shouldn’t have been so surprised that a garlic soup would be so strongly garlic—but I was. The soup was creamy with the wonderful crunch of roasted almonds but the raw garlic was harshly overpowering. The recipe does state that the bread mellows the garlic. I’m not so sure about that.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔