Picada Catalana

Picada is Catalonia's pounded finish: almonds, fried bread, garlic and parsley worked in a mortar, loosened with the pot's own liquid and stirred into a stew just before it is done. It isn't a relish to sit on top. In many Catalan pots, the sofregit, the slow onion and tomato base, begins the dish; picada closes it. This little mortarful binds the juices without flour and carries garlic, nuts and parsley through every spoonful.

The order decides it. I pound the garlic with salt first, bruise in the parsley, then work the warm almonds and fried bread while everything is still dry. Only when it has become a coarse, oily paste do I add hot cooking liquid. Dry pounding releases the almond oil and breaks the bread fine enough to thicken the pot. Add liquid too soon and the ingredients slide around the mortar instead of becoming one paste. Stir it into the final 5 to 8 minutes of cooking, enough to mellow the garlic without flattening the parsley.

Marcona almonds are lovely, but you don't need them. Ordinary raw almonds work; if the skins remain, the picada will be darker, flecked and faintly more bitter. Hazelnuts are another traditional Catalan choice, especially for meat or mushroom stews, though their flavour is deeper. A day-old baguette stands in perfectly well for pa de pagès, the round country loaf. No hace falta haber pisado España. The Margin beside this one says only: stop before smooth. Siempre sale, si lo sigues.