The picada is one of the characteristic sauces

Sauce

In cooking, a sauce is liquid, creaming or semi-solid food served on or used in preparing other foods. Sauces are not normally consumed by themselves; they add flavor, moisture, and visual appeal to another dish. Sauce is a French word taken from the Latin salsus, meaning salted...

 and culinary techniques essential to Catalan cuisine

Catalan cuisine

Catalan cuisine is a Mediterranean cuisine from Catalonia. It may also refer to the shared cuisine of Roussillon and Andorra, which has a similar cuisine to the Alt Urgell and Cerdanya comarques, often referred to as "Catalan mountain cuisine"...

. It is not an autonomous sauce like mayonnaise

Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise, , often abbreviated as mayo, is a sauce. It is a stable emulsion of oil, egg yolk and either vinegar or lemon juice, with many options for embellishment with other herbs and spices. Lecithin in the egg yolk is the emulsifier. Mayonnaise varies in color but is often white, cream, or pale...

 or romesco

Romesco

Romesco is a sauce originating in Tarragona that is typically made from almonds, pine nuts, and/or hazelnuts, roasted garlic, olive oil and nyora peppers, a smaller, sweet, dried variety of red bell pepper. Other common ingredients include roasted tomatoes, red wine vinegar and onion...

, but it is added as a seasoning during the cooking of a recipe.

Often the preparation of a concoction begins with another essential sauce, like the sofregit

Sofrito

Sofrito is a combination of aromatic ingredients which have been cut in very small pieces, and slowly sauteed or braised in cooking oil for 15-30 minutes....

, and ends with the final adding of the picada some minutes before the cooking termination. Picada is used to blend and thicken juices, to provide an excellent finishing touch to a multitude of recipes: meats, fish, rice, soups, legumes, vegetables. There are many variants for the rest of ingredients. The commonest ones are garlic

Garlic

Allium sativum, commonly known as garlic, is a species in the onion genus, Allium. Its close relatives include the onion, shallot, leek, chive, and rakkyo. Dating back over 6,000 years, garlic is native to central Asia, and has long been a staple in the Mediterranean region, as well as a frequent...

 (so often it is considered almost essential), saffron

Saffron

Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus, commonly known as the saffron crocus. Crocus is a genus in the family Iridaceae. Each saffron crocus grows to and bears up to four flowers, each with three vivid crimson stigmas, which are each the distal end of a carpel...

 (considered essential too by many cooks), and / or parsley

Parsley

Parsley is a species of Petroselinum in the family Apiaceae, native to the central Mediterranean region , naturalized elsewhere in Europe, and widely cultivated as an herb, a spice and a vegetable.- Description :Garden parsley is a bright green hairless biennial herbaceous plant in temperate...

 (yet another regular appearance too). Other possible ingredients used more rarely are cinnamon

Cinnamon

Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several trees from the genus Cinnamomum that is used in both sweet and savoury foods...

, cooked liver

Liver

The liver is a vital organ present in vertebrates and some other animals. It has a wide range of functions, including detoxification, protein synthesis, and production of biochemicals necessary for digestion...

 (of chicken

Chicken

The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird...

 or rabbit

Rabbit

Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha, found in several parts of the world...

), chocolate

Chocolate

Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America. Its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC...

, cummin, herbs and other spices.

The picada is prepared in the mortar

Mortar and pestle

A mortar and pestle is a tool used to crush, grind, and mix solid substances . The pestle is a heavy bat-shaped object, the end of which is used for crushing and grinding. The mortar is a bowl, typically made of hard wood, ceramic or stone...

 and must contain a basic triad: almond

Almond

The almond , is a species of tree native to the Middle East and South Asia. Almond is also the name of the edible and widely cultivated seed of this tree...

, bread

Bread

Bread is a staple food prepared by cooking a dough of flour and water and often additional ingredients. Doughs are usually baked, but in some cuisines breads are steamed , fried , or baked on an unoiled frying pan . It may be leavened or unleavened...

 and some liquid

Liquid

Liquid is one of the three classical states of matter . Like a gas, a liquid is able to flow and take the shape of a container. Some liquids resist compression, while others can be compressed. Unlike a gas, a liquid does not disperse to fill every space of a container, and maintains a fairly...

. Almonds are toasted and can be replaced by another nut like hazelnut

Hazelnut

A hazelnut is the nut of the hazel and is also known as a cob nut or filbert nut according to species. A cob is roughly spherical to oval, about 15–25 mm long and 10–15 mm in diameter, with an outer fibrous husk surrounding a smooth shell. A filbert is more elongated, being about twice...

, pinenut, walnut

Walnut

Juglans is a plant genus of the family Juglandaceae, the seeds of which are known as walnuts. They are deciduous trees, 10–40 meters tall , with pinnate leaves 200–900 millimetres long , with 5–25 leaflets; the shoots have chambered pith, a character shared with the wingnuts , but not the hickories...

, or some combination of those. Hard, dry bread is crushed on the mortar, that is, toasted or stale

Staling

Staling, or "going stale", is a chemical and physical process in bread and other foods that reduces their palatability. Stale bread is dry and leathery.-Mechanism and effects:...

, or bread crust, or fried in oil on the pan, or even some sort of sweet biscuit

Biscuit

A biscuit is a baked, edible, and commonly flour-based product. The term is used to apply to two distinctly different products in North America and the Commonwealth Nations....

 or cookie. The liquid used is usually the cooking juice

Juice

Juice is the liquid that is naturally contained in fruit or vegetable tissue.Juice is prepared by mechanically squeezing or macerating fruit or vegetable flesh without the application of heat or solvents. For example, orange juice is the liquid extract of the fruit of the orange tree...

 but stock

Stock

The capital stock of a business entity represents the original capital paid into or invested in the business by its founders. It serves as a security for the creditors of a business since it cannot be withdrawn to the detriment of the creditors...

 or hot water

Water

Water is a chemical substance with the chemical formula H2O. A water molecule contains one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms connected by covalent bonds. Water is a liquid at ambient conditions, but it often co-exists on Earth with its solid state, ice, and gaseous state . Water also exists in a...

 can be used as well.

Preparation

A typical preparation of picada:

Put a little salt in a mortar, to prevent slipping, and four cloves of garlic.
Crush the garlic with a pestle and then add a dozen toasted almonds, a dozen pine nuts, a slice of toast, and a few strands of saffron. Crush it all together to get a sort of paste. A few parsley leaves can be added too. When the batter becomes homogeneous, throw in a few spoonfuls of the juice left in the pan (from cooking a meat) and mix it to get a more or less thick sauce. About ten minutes before finishing cooking the dish, pour the paste of the picada and spread it all over the entire surface, letting it join the stew on low heat.

Historical background and in other countries

Historically, picada of almonds is documented in Catalan cuisine from its very beginning. It is already present in the oldest medieval treaties. Other neighboring Mediterranean

Mediterranean diet

The Mediterranean diet is a modern nutritional recommendation inspired by the traditional dietary patterns of southern Italy, Crete and much of the rest of Greece in the 1960s....

 cuisines, as Occitan

Occitan cuisine

Occitan cuisine is the traditional cuisine and gastronomy in Occitania or in the lands where people speak Occitan.-Introduction:This kind of gastronomy is mostly Mediterranean cuisine, very near to Catalan cuisine and Italian cuisine in the east, a little less in the west, which has influences of...

 or Italian

Italian cuisine

Italian cuisine has developed through centuries of social and political changes, with roots as far back as the 4th century BCE. Italian cuisine in itself takes heavy influences, including Etruscan, ancient Greek, ancient Roman, Byzantine, Jewish and Arab cuisines...

 ones have essentially similar sauces such as pesto

Pesto

Pesto is a sauce originating in Genoa in the Liguria region of northern Italy , and traditionally consists of crushed garlic, basil and pine nuts blended with olive oil and Parmigiano Reggiano and Fiore Sardo...

.