The sweet and bitter flavor of almonds makes them an extremely versatile ingredient in the kitchen, you can find almonds in sweet recipes or with fruit and you can find them in savory recipes, for example often in fish recipes. It's the same for gratins, you can find chopped or whole almonds in fruit gratins as in fish gratins or in gratinated first courses.
What does gratin mean
Gratinating, an Italian term derived from the French gratin, is a cooking technique, the purpose of this cooking technique is to obtain the formation of a crunchy crust that covers the dish that is being cooked but avoiding burning what is underneath, indeed in a gratin done according to the rules of the art the heart of the dish remains moist and soft. In cookbooks that explain gratin, the Maillard reaction is often mentioned, a series of chemical processes named after the French doctor and chemist Louis Camille Maillard. Maillard was not a cook, his greatest contribution to medicine was the study of kidney disease, but he was also interested in protein synthesis and in this context he described how amino acids reacted with sugars. This is the Maillard reaction, the reaction between proteins (amino acids are the building blocks of proteins) and sugars. In cooking, in practically all cases where a golden crunchy crust is formed, this reaction comes into play: in gratin, in breading, in the formation of the crust on the surface of many baked products, etc. Why do you need to know this? If when you gratinate, especially vegetables where proteins are not present in the dish unlike meat and fish, you forget to add cheese to the breading, if when you bread you do not pass in the egg (alternatively you could try milk) and instead of the golden tasty crust you get a charred dish do not be surprised, there must always be sugars (ensure by flour or breadcrumbs which are carbohydrates, i.e. sugars) and proteins.
Where to use the almond gratin breading
From what was anticipated in the introduction it follows that you could use the almond gratin breading for the quick creation of various gratin dishes whose recipes call for sprinkling with grated almonds as a final touch. For example, the almond pear gratin calls for spreading the pears on a dough made of flour and grated almonds. Even the recipe for baby carrot gratin in batter calls for mixing flour with almond flour. There are also recipes that use an almond béchamel, this almond gratin breading made only with wheat flour, almonds, salt and brewer's yeast could also be used as a base for the preparation of that.
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