Rory's Sauce Malaga (also known as roast almond, egg and anchovy sauce).
Ingredients
You find inspiration for new recipes and dishes in many different places. It might be a combination of ingredients that rings a bell when glimpsed in an article in a weekend food supplement. It might be a photograph on Instagram, a dish in a restaurant or sometimes an idea just pops into your head.
Markets, where lots of different ingredients are displayed side by side, are also a likely spot to spark an idea. I find this particularly the case in markets in countries warmer than our own such as France, Italy and Spain where the range of ingredients is generally wider than at home.
Markets in more exotic places such as India or southeast Asia are also a potential treasure trove for ideas, but I tend to spend a lot of my time in those markets asking what a particularly strange looking ingredient is and how it is used. This can be a frustrating exercise as often the craziest looking ingredients may not be available at home, so not suitable for adding to a recipe in this part of the world.
Of course, not all ideas are good ideas and not all tested dishes yield a palatable result though it is very pleasing to come up with a new dish that you know will give pleasure not just to oneself but also to others.
This particular recipe came about as a result of a conversation with a friend who had eaten a dish in a tapas bar in Malaga. All he could tell me that the dish or was it a sauce was great and had contained hard-boiled eggs and almonds. That is not really a lot to go with but I roasted some almonds, hard-boiled some eggs and the rest of the ingredients just seemed to make sense and ended up being pounded together with my pestle and mortar.
This combination may sound unusual, but it is really delicious. I serve the sauce with grilled or roast chicken or slow roast lamb and also roast vegetables such as carrots or beetroot. The technique for making the sauce may also sound strange, but mashing and pounding the ingredients with the pestle and mortar gives the sauce a very particular and very lovely consistency.
Makes: Sauce for 8 – 10 servings
- 50g un-skinned almonds
- 2 eggs
- 4 anchovies, coarsely chopped
- 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
- Preheat an oven to 180c.
- Place the almonds on an oven tray and roast for about 20 minutes or until the almonds are richly coloured, starting to split and some of the skins starting to lift. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely.
- Place the eggs in a saucepan of salted boiling water and cook for exactly 10 minutes. Remove immediately and cool in a bowl of cold water. When cool, peel off the shells.
- Place one third of the cooled almonds, a pinch of ground black pepper and the anchovies in the mortar and start pounding. As the almonds start to break down add another third and a little olive oil as you go to loosen the mixture.
- When the final third of almonds has been added and the mixture is looking mushy, add in the whole eggs and pound those into the mixture.
- Add the remaining olive oil in increments to achieve a sauce that is slightly coarse yet creamy in consistency - somewhat but not quite as refined as a pesto sauce.
- The sauce will need all of the olive oil and the lemon juice can now be added to sharpen up the flavour. I occasionally add a few drops of cold water whilst making the sauce and also when all of the ingredients have been added to achieve the required consistency.
- The sauce rarely needs salt as the anchovies are quite salty, but do taste just in case a few grains are needed.
- Refrigerate until needed but serve at room temperature.
Almonds
- Preheat an oven to 180c.
- Place the almonds on an oven tray and roast for about 20 minutes or until the almonds are richly coloured, starting to split and some of the skins.
Watch How to Cook Well with Rory O'Connell at 8:30pm on Tuesday evenings on RTÉ One.
