Pork and beef meatballs poached in a pale sauce of ground almonds, saffron, garlic and fried bread, thickened by the nuts rather than by flour. A direct survivor of the Andalusi kitchen.

Almond-thickened sauces are one of the clearest inheritances the caliphate left in Córdoba's cooking. Before roux and before cream, kitchens here thickened liquid by pounding fried bread and blanched almonds in a mortar with saffron and garlic, a technique that runs through medieval Andalusi manuscripts and survives on tabernas cartas today. The same base sauce carries meatballs, chicken, salt cod or hard-boiled eggs depending on the house. Ermita de la Candelaria, cooking in a converted hermitage, keeps the meatball version on its carta as a house plate.

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