Andalusia · Soup
Salmorejo Cordobés
- Easy
- 20 min
- roughly 4 of 4 for cost
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, aromatics blooming from the first bite, on a rich, rounded finish.
Ingredients
- 1 kg very ripe tomatoes, chilled
- 200 g crumb from a day-old dense white loaf, torn
- 150 ml extra virgin olive oil, picual if you have it
- 1 small garlic clove, green germ removed
- 10 ml sherry vinegar
- 12 g fine salt
- 2 eggs, hard boiled and chopped
- 60 g jamón serrano, torn into strips
The skills inside
Reducing a sauceSalted water & the float test
The words inside
Jamón SerranoJamón Ibérico (and the Bellota Grades)
Allergen screen
Found: egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Blitz the chilled tomatoes on their own to a purée, then tear in the bread and leave it 10 minutes, until the crumb collapses when you press it. 10 min
- Add the garlic and salt and blend in short bursts until no flecks of skin remain, stopping if the jug starts to feel warm under your hand.
- Drop to the lowest speed and pour the oil in a thin thread until the colour turns from red to pale coral and the surface reads matt rather than shiny.
- Season with the vinegar and chill for two hours; it is right when a spoon drawn through leaves a track that closes slowly.
- Serve in shallow bowls with the egg, the jamón and a last thread of oil.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Reducing a sauce 95 recipes
- A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
- Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
- The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
- Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
- Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.
Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.
Salted water & the float test 188 recipes
- The water was salted before anything went in, and tasting it confirms it: seasoned on the tongue, with the salt dissolved rather than sitting on the pot floor.
- There is enough water, hot enough, that the pot returns to its boil quickly after the food goes in and never stops moving.
- Where the dish uses the float as its signal, the signal is obeyed: the pieces rise and they come out then, not several minutes later once something else was finished.
- Nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pot or welded to itself, and the water has not thickened into a cloudy sludge.
- Drained on a bite rather than on the clock: resistance at the centre, with no chalky raw core.
Where it goes wrong The pot was too small and the water unsalted, so it never recovered its boil: the food sat in slack water, went gummy at the surface, and comes out bland in a way that no sauce afterwards can fix.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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