I Bought Green Almonds. Then I Didn't Know What To Do Next.

My first time cooking with the sour, hyper-seasonal ingredient.

Two weeks ago I sashayed through my local farmers’ market and found a vendor selling the storied green almond. I had heard of this ephemeral almond before, but I had never actually seen one, let alone tasted one. Now here they were, overflowing in a mound on a table. Over the years I had encountered countless recipes in my cookbooks that called for green almonds, but who could ever make them with such an elusive ingredient? So there was only one path forward: I forked over some cold, hard cash and claimed a bagful of the fuzzy green things.

I went home and did some swift research. At last I could finally pounce on all those countless green almond recipes! There were so many to choose from! Unfortunately, they all existed in my imagination because I had only one single recipe in my collection, and it was concerned solely with eating the almonds raw as a snack. I don’t know how or why I thought I was sitting on a treasure trove of green almond recipes, but I was clearly misguided. Time to improvise.

PSA: if you’re wondering how I knew I only had one singular green almond recipe, it’s because I use a database service called Eat Your Books. The site allows you to enter your cookbook collection - or magazines such as Cook’s Illustrated — and in turn it spits out all the recipes you have access to. It’s invaluable, and no, this is not a paid ad. Just a personal endorsement from someone with too many cookbooks and not enough patience to leaf through all of them.

Almonds, amiright?

The green almond, for the uninitiated, is essentially an unripe, young almond. Its center has yet to become the hard almond we know and love, instead presenting as a gelatinous teardrop encased in a soft-ish, fuzzy flesh capsule. Intriguing!

Provocative!

Green almonds can be eaten whole, and in fact, I’ve been told they are a popular Persian snack. So, naturally, the first order of business for me was to sample the goods. Online articles claim green almonds taste like unripe peaches, and since I’m not a big peach fan, I really can’t speak to the accuracy of such claims. What I can tell you is that the green almond was shockingly sour - bracingly, dare I say - and also quite vegetal. To me, the green almonds reminded me more of sorrel, which coincidentally I had also purchased from the market (this tidbit has no relevance to the overall story, but I included it for the market-haul completionists out there).

Actually, I take that back: the sorrel does matter. One of my go-to recipes is Bonnie Frumkin Morales’ excellent Perlovka salad, which features pearl barley dressed in an intoxicating green sauce of sorrel, dill, garlic, hazelnuts, and vinegar. Since the green almonds were already taking me to Sorrel Town, I figured I’d do a play on the perlovka sauce.

But I also didn’t want to just grind all these almonds up into a sorrel-adjacent sauce. Heck, I could do that with standard almonds. I wanted to center the green almond in a way that showcased its shape and edible encasement. The path I landed on was simply to do all of the above. Make a sauce AND keep some almonds whole(ish).

First order of business, I got some water boiling. This was going to be a pasta. I had considered making chickpeas the base of my green almond dish, and for a moment I even considered a grain like pearl barley or farro, but I didn’t want orb-on-orb texture. Instead, I reached for spaghetti. The idea of long strands of pasta curling around green almonds felt right, not to mention vaguely intimate.

While the water boiled, I set about making the green sauce. I dumped nearly all my green almonds into the food processor — reserving a handful for cooking whole — and added some garlic, salt, black pepper, and olive oil. Since I had some dill and mint in the fridge, I added those also. The mere presence of green almonds elevated this experience to one of those Official Springtime Dishes™; so the addition of fresh herbs simply felt right (plus, dill is another direct reference to the perlovka salad recipe).

Eventually, after much oil drizzling and salt adjustment, the green almond sauce was ready. It had a bright, pale green color, and the bracingly sour flavor of the almonds had now been counterbalanced by the seasoning, herbs, and oil. Oh, and I added a splash of rice wine vinegar to add a subtle and different type of tang.

At this point, the almond sauce still felt a little stiff, but I was afraid that thinning it out with more olive oil or even water might compromise flavor. I had a plan though… Let’s put a pin in this.

Over on the stove, I added the spaghetti to the water and got to work cooking my reserved green almonds, which I had cut into thick slices. I heated up a healthy glug of olive oil in a Dutch oven and tossed in the almonds with some sliced garlic, salt, and red pepper flakes. I then sautéed for about 7 minutes or so. The original plan was to develop some color on the almonds, but I decided to cut the flame after a taste test.

After sampling an almond slice, I was impressed by how the almonds had absorbed the flavors of the pot without losing any of their unique qualities. Strangely enough, they tasted almost like briny olives, thanks to the garlic and red pepper. I really liked what was happening; so I suspended all almond-frying operations. Plus, the semi-firm texture felt just right, and I feared things might get too soft if I cooked further.

The pasta still had about two minutes left; so I used that time to embark on my master plan for the sauce. I dumped it into the Dutch oven and added a ladle or two of pasta water. This was exactly what I needed to both loosen up the almond sauce and also up its silky factor. This was all heading in the right direction.

When the spaghetti was ready, I added it to the almond pot and stirred it around, letting whatever residual pasta water mix in and do its magic. Of note: I only used half a package for this dish. I wanted the dish to feel lush, and I was concerned that a full box of pasta may force the sauce to fall into the background.

Once everything was mixed together, there was only one last element I needed to add: parmesan. I worried for a moment this might be gilding the lily — would cheese detract away from all the Spring flavors and fresh ingredients? And more importantly, would that be a bad thing?

Well, of course I parm’d it up. I threw half a wedge into the food processor, and since I hadn’t even bothered to clean it out from the sauce-making, what emerged was a fun, green parmesan mixture. Perfect! I heaped it onto the pasta, mixed it around, and served myself a neat bowl of this green-on-green-on-green dish.

It was lovely.

The spaghetti, garlic, and salt did a fine and necessary job of balancing out the tart green almond flavors, allowing the dish to feel layered and incredibly seasonal. It may look like a pesto in the photos, but the flavors were a whole separate beast. A green beast, specifically. A sour, green beast.

Thank goodness for the parmesan though. That little addition in the end really brought all the elements together. It would have been a perfectly tasty dish without the cheese, but the salty, umami aspects of parmesan served as some sort of divine bridge to the green almonds, really elevating the whole thing to a new tier.

I also greatly enjoyed the pops of garlic tang that the sliced almonds afforded. I suspect a sharp meat like pepperoni could provide the same flavor moment and then some, but that would also detract from the clean virtues of this aggressively green, vegetarian dish.

And so the experiment was a success. I had anxiety that I was going to botch things and pilfer away my precious green almonds — which, notably, are only available for, like, 35 seconds each year. Not to fear though: ground into a sauce or sautéed with bold aromatics, the green almonds proved to be an easy ingredient to play around with.

I’ve received feedback that people want more recipes. This isn’t developed, but here’s an approximation of what I did last night. I’m hoping the measurements are correct, but honestly, it’s hard to say. Use this as a springboard for your own plans:

Green Almond and Parmesan Spaghetti

My last name, Mandelker, means “almond,” so in many ways, this pasta was my destiny. Although, I guess same could be said for anything with almonds.

Ingredients

4 cups green almonds, whole and rinsed

8 cloves peeled garlic

1/2 cup roughly chopped dill

1/4 cup roughly chopped mint (parsley would be fine too)

3/4 to 1 cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for glug activities

kosher salt and pepper to taste

1 tbs rice vinegar, unseasoned

8oz spaghetti or other long pasta (bucatini would be great)

1 tsp red pepper flakes

1/2 cup grated parmesan

The Steps

1. Bring a deep pot of water to a boil for your pasta. While this happens, reserve a cup of the almonds. Put the rest of the almonds in a food processor and pulse a few times until they looked decently chopped up. Add 4 of the whole garlic cloves to the food processor and pulse three or four times. Lastly, add a large pinch of salt, a few twists of fresh black pepper, and the dill and mint. Pulse until everything appears uniform and minced.

2. With the processor running, drizzle in the olive oil. You may or may not use up the full cup’s worth. The mixture will turn into a rough paste and then transition into a fluffy sauce. You want it a little looser than a hummus, but if you make it too loose, that’s okay. You’ll just cut back on the pasta water later on. Lastly, add the rice vinegar and process a little more.

3. Taste the sauce. There’s a good chance it’s still incredibly sour. Offset this by adding more salt. Also, you want a lovely but not aggressive garlic flavor. This would be a good time to add another clove if the garlic isn’t coming through.

4. By now, your pasta water could be boiling. But you’re not ready for it; so just let it boil while you do this next step. Slice your reserved almonds crosswise into chunky disks - about 1/4” to 1/2” wide. You decide what width you like - just don’t make them too thin. You want these to taste chunky. Also slice the remaining 4 cloves of garlic crosswise into 1/4” pieces.

5. Pour a healthy GLUG of olive oil into a Dutch oven or a pan (I prefer a Dutch oven since the tall walls make tossing pasta later on easier). Heat over a medium flame until it’s shimmering. While you wait for that, dump a handful of salt into the bubbling water and then add your pasta. Cook for however long the box tells you.

6. Add the sliced almonds and garlic to the Dutch oven, as well as the red pepper flakes and about a teaspoon of salt. Sauté on medium heat for about 7-9 minutes until the almonds have softened a little and absorbed the garlic flavor and some spice. As you cook the almond slices, the gelatinous interiors may separate out from their shells. That’s okay! Press on.

7. Drop the heat on the Dutch oven to low and add the green sauce to the almonds. (Don’t wash out your food processor!) Stir the sauce around with the almond chunks, add a ladle of pasta water, and stir some more. The sauce will loosen up. If it still looks a little too thick, add another ladle.

8. If you haven’t ground up your parmesan yet, now would be a good time. Save time and use the food processor since it’s already active. Don’t even bother cleaning it out. Just grind, baby.

9. When the pasta is al dente, don’t drain it. Simply remove the spaghetti with tongs and add it directly to the Dutch oven, allowing any residual pasta water to contribute to the sauce. Stir some more and really get those almond slices distributed throughout.

10. Reserve a few tablespoons of parmesan for garnish. Add the rest to the pot and mix rigorously until incorporated. Do one last taste test for seasoning, adjust, and then serve in bowls topped with the reserved cheese. Enjoy!

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Have you cooked with green almonds? How have you prepared them? Tell me everything.