My very good friend, R., is expecting her first baby in a few months. The grandmas-to-be and I are lucky enough to be able to host the shower for R and her husband in ten short days (what? counting? me?). Being me, I have decided to do the food myself rather than hiring professionals (this is, after all, a blog about food). In an effort to avoid shades of Thanksgiving Day, I decided to make the food in stages and freeze it so that on the day of the shower all I need to do is bake and/or re-heat. (Thanksgiving Day, you know, the Day In Which You Cook For Ten Hours Straight And By The End You Can't Even Bring Yourself To Eat Any Turkey.)
Today I started the food prep with candied nuts. My Bob makes the candied nuts for her salads (they really do make for a fabulous salad) and served them to us for dinner when Mike and I were visiting to plant a garden over Memorial Day weekend. I got the idea for using them as a shower food when I noticed that Mike was absent mindedly munching on them sans-salad. So I swiped Bob's recipe, modified it, and am now sharing it with you (having first been given the author's permission). Since the recipe is based on using 2 cups of nuts and I am feeding 60 people I made several batches before running out of nuts (more will follow once I replenish my supply). The recipe is a basic one, but I modified each batch by adding spices to it. The photo above is of the smokey-spicy candied pecans.
1/4 cup water
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 cups pecan halves
pinch salt
Are you ready? I am going to give you the key to this recipe...keep stirring. Never stop stirring. You will stir and stir and stir and stir. And when it feels as though your arm is about to fall off your body you must dig deep and stir some more. I have to put the fear of All Things Holy into you here when I tell you that if you stop stirring (say to allow the blood to return to your fingers) this will burn. You are turning the sugar into candy and it goes from lovely candy to stinky mess in a very short time. If you must stop stirring (such as an imminent loss of consciousness) pull the pot from the heat before you stop. Other than that, this recipe is really a breeze.
You will need a tall-sided pot. Put the pot over the heat, add the sugar, the nuts, the spices you've chosen and the salt to the pot. Pour the water into the pot, turn the heat on to high and (you guessed it) begin stirring. The constant stirring doesn't really have to begin until the liquid in the bottom of the pot comes to a boil. (It's only 1/4 of a cup, it boils quickly.) You will know that the nuts are done when there isn't any more liquid in the bottom and it is getting hard to stir the nuts around because they are sticking to each other. I timed it for the second batch, it took 6 - 7 minutes so keep stirring and think about the buff arm you will have. When all of the liquid is gone from the pot, remove the pot from the heat and scrape the nuts onto a large dinner plate. Spread them into an even layer to cool.
The first batch I made got 1 tsp of smoked paprika and 1 tsp of chili powder. The second batch got 1 1/2 tsp ground cardamom, 1/2 tsp of ground ginger and 1/2 tsp of nutmeg. I also think that I will do a plain batch and a really spicy cayenne pepper-curry batch. These will keep in an airtight container for 2 weeks (if they stick around that long) and you can always freeze them. Other nuts or a combination of nuts would be a good idea (I'm thinking of adding roasted peanuts to the spicy batch). Bon Appetit!
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