Spanish Sherry and Almond Gravy

Spanish cooking thickens sauces with a picada: fried bread, nuts and garlic pounded to a paste and stirred in near the end. It gives you body and a toasty, slightly nutty flavour that flour cannot, and it has been done that way for centuries. With sherry and saffron behind it you get a gravy that suits roast chicken, pork or lamb and tastes like nothing else on a British table.

Ingredients

Makes about 500ml, enough for six

• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 1 thick slice day old white bread, crusts off, torn into pieces
• 50g (2oz) blanched almonds Marcona if you can get them
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 small pinch saffron threads
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 150ml (5fl oz) oloroso or amontillado sherry dry and nutty, not cream sherry
• 600ml (1 pint) hot chicken stock
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tbsp sherry vinegar
• 1 tbsp chopped flat leaf parsley
• salt and black pepper

Kit

• Frying pan
• Pestle and mortar or small blender
• Saucepan
• Whisk

Method

1. Heat 3 tbsp of the olive oil in a frying pan over a medium heat. Fry the bread until deep golden all over, about three minutes, then lift it out. Fry the almonds for two minutes until they colour, then the whole garlic cloves for one minute until golden. Take everything out and leave the oil in the pan.

2. Toast the saffron in a dry corner of the pan for ten seconds, or crush it in your fingers into a tablespoon of hot stock and leave it to steep. Either way you want the colour to bleed out before it goes in.

3. Pound the fried bread, almonds and garlic in a mortar with a pinch of salt until you have a coarse damp paste, or pulse them in a small blender. This is your picada. Leave it slightly gritty rather than smooth.

4. Add the remaining oil to the pan, turn the heat down and cook the onion for ten to twelve minutes until soft and golden. Stir in the paprika and tomato puree and cook for two minutes, keeping the heat low so the paprika does not burn.

5. Pour in the sherry and let it bubble hard for four minutes, scraping the pan, until reduced by half and the alcohol smell has gone.

6. Add the stock, saffron and bay leaf. Simmer uncovered for twelve minutes so the flavours settle and the liquid reduces a little.

7. Whisk in the picada a spoonful at a time. It will thicken the gravy almost immediately and turn it a pale toasty brown. Simmer very gently for five more minutes, stirring, until it coats a spoon and the bread has completely dissolved into the sauce.

8. Fish out the bay leaf. Add the sherry vinegar, taste and season well. Stir in the parsley just before serving. It should taste nutty, savoury and faintly sweet from the sherry, with a clean sharp finish.

Tips worth knowing

• Use dry sherry. Cream sherry or anything labelled sweet will give you a cloying gravy, and oloroso brings the nutty depth this sauce is built around.
• Do not blend the picada to a smooth paste. A little texture is traditional and gives the gravy a better mouthfeel than a completely smooth sauce.
• Saffron is expensive and easy to waste. Steeping it in a little hot liquid for ten minutes gets far more colour and flavour out of it than throwing the threads straight into a big pot.
• For a non-alcoholic version, use 150ml of white grape juice with 1 tbsp of sherry vinegar in place of the sherry, and add a few extra toasted almonds to the picada for the nuttiness you lose.

Keeping and reheating

Keeps four days in the fridge. Bread thickened sauces thicken further on standing, so loosen with stock when reheating. It freezes for three months but can go slightly grainy, which a quick blitz with a stick blender fixes.

Questions people ask