Choosing Almonds for Moroccan Pastry

Guide

For most Moroccan pastry you want blanched almonds — skins removed — which give a pale, smooth paste and a clean, sweet flavour. You can buy them ready-blanched, or blanch whole almonds yourself by pouring boiling water over them, waiting a minute, and slipping off the skins. Blanching your own from whole almonds is cheaper and fresher, and lets you toast or grind them exactly as you want. For gazelle horns, the almonds are ground to a fine paste with sugar and orange-blossom or rose water; for amlou they are roasted first for a deeper, nuttier flavour.

Freshness is everything with almonds because their high oil content means they go stale and rancid over time. Buy from a source with good turnover, and give them a smell and taste — fresh almonds are sweet and clean; any bitterness, cardboard flavour or musty smell means they are old. Whole almonds in their skins keep fresher and longer than pre-ground almond meal, which stales fastest of all, so buying whole and grinding your own gives both better flavour and better shelf life.

Grind almonds in short pulses and stop before they turn to oily paste, unless a smooth paste is what you want; adding a little of the recipe's sugar helps keep ground almonds dry and powdery. Store almonds airtight somewhere cool and dark, or in the fridge or freezer for longer keeping. A note of caution: real bitter almonds (used in tiny amounts for flavour in some traditional recipes) contain natural toxins and should never be eaten raw in quantity — the almonds you cook and eat freely are sweet almonds.