Butter Toffee Almonds

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Plain, cayenne pepper, or rock salt. We liked all three. Which will you make?

We don’t like to visit friends empty-handed, especially when we invite ourselves over to watch a sporting event on TV. In bush Alaska, there aren’t six-packs of beer or bottles of wine to grab at the store. Our ready gift is usually something we’ve created in the kitchen. Recently we were running late for one of the March Madness basketball games and had nothing already prepared, so a few whirls in the kitchen and we had buttered toffee almonds – three ways. The original plain version is quite tasty. Two other versions were made by sprinkling cayenne pepper on some for that back-of-your-throat-bite and by sprinkling large grains of sea salt for another pleasant surprise. All three versions were tied for first place. This recipe was finished in 15 minutes. Lucky for us, the walk over in sub-freezing temperatures cooled the almonds enough to eat as soon as we entered our friends’ home.

Butter Toffee Nuts Recipe

Ingredients

1 cup sugar
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
3 tablespoons water
3 cups whole almonds (or use 3 cups peanuts)

Directions

Use a deep, heavy-bottomed saucepan to heat all of the ingredients, except the nuts. Stir the mixture constantly to prevent scorching. Using a candy thermometer and medium heat, bring the mixture to 300 degrees. The temperature will rise as the water is boiled off, and this can happen quickly, so be prepared to lower the heat or remove the candy from the heat as needed.
As soon as the mixture reaches the desired temperature, remove it from the stove and add the nuts. Mix until all nuts are coated. Pour the nut mixture onto a greased cookie sheet spread into an even layer. Let fully cool. This step works well on parchment paper.

Recipe adapted from http://www.life123.com/food/candies-fudge/toffee/making-butter-toffee-almonds.shtml.

Crustless Cranberry Cake

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Tart cranberries and almonds make for an irresistible combination. This cake is delicious served with vanilla bean ice cream or covered with hot vanilla custard.

With eight weeks to go in our school year, it’s time to get creative with items remaining in our pantry and freezers. Our pecan upside-down pumpkin cake was a delicious way to use up a cup of frozen pumpkin puree that survived the holiday season. Our next challenge was two cups of cranberries from the freezer door. I found a promising recipe for a crustless cranberry “pie.” We are fans of tart and sweet flavor combinations, and this recipe was a terrific way to use those residual cranberries. I decided to pulverize the almonds so they would provide more flavor than texture.

Crustless Cranberry Cake

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups cranberries
1/2 cup whole almonds pulverized to the consistency of coarse flour
1/2 cup applesauce (used instead of butter)
3 eggs, well beaten
2 tablespoons almond syrup (the kind used to flavor drinks in coffee shops)
(optional) zest from 1 orange or 1 tablespoon Grand Marnier

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease one deep 9-inch pie pan.
Combine the flour, sugar, and salt. Stir in the cranberries and the almonds, and toss to coat. Stir in the applesauce, beaten eggs, and almond extract. The mixture will be very thick. Spread the batter into the greased pan.
Bake at 350 degrees F for 40 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted near the center comes out clean.
Serve warm with whipped cream, ice cream, or warm vanilla custard.

Recipe adapted from http://allrecipes.com/recipe/crustless-cranberry-pie/Detail.aspx

Florentines – Chocolate or Plain?

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

These crispy yet chewy cookies can be made as a sandwich with a layer of chocolate to hold them together, chocolate dipped, or with a drizzle of chocolate. And they are wonderful without any chocolate at all.

When I was young my family sometimes went to a deli in San Francisco where, out of an assortment of scrumptious confections, I was allowed to pick out a cookie after our meal. Often, I chose a chocolate dipped florentine, a delicious almond cookie flavored with the essence of orange zest, one of my favorite combinations.

We are trying to keep our kitchen as simple as possible in order to ready ourselves for life on a boat with only a relatively small galley kitchen. So it was only after serious contemplation that we recently added a new gadget to our galley – a Miallegro stick blender. Our manual nut chopper has worked well for most duties, but would have been tough to chop almonds fine and consistent enough to meet the needs of this recipe. The stick blender is much smaller than our counter top blender and much more versatile. With 550 watts of power and a dedicated nut chopper attachment, I had finely ground, perfectly uniform coarse almond flour in less than one minute!

Even with the help of the chopper, this recipe was time consuming, but our cookie taste testers all agreed: the result was fabulous. The first step was blanching and skinning the almonds. After some trial and error, I figured out that the easiest way to skin the almonds was to boil them for two minutes and then pinch them out of their skins while they were soaking in cold water. After this step, the almonds had to dry. I let them sit out on a cookie sheet overnight. After the dough is made, it needs to sit for about a half an hour in order to cool enough to handle. I could only bake six cookies at a time, which also added to the time. Lastly, if you dip the cookies or drizzle them in chocolate, this has to be done after the cookies have cooled. Wait! You still can’t serve them until the chocolate sets up. This investment in time results in cookies that end up disappearing quickly! I don’t know which I like better… the chewy yet crunchy texture, or the combination of the orange, almond, and chocolate flavors.

Florentine Cookies

Yields 24 six-inch cookies

1 3/4 cups blanched almonds, sliced (about 5 ounces)
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Finely grated zest of 1 orange (about 2 tablespoons)
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons heavy cream
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Chocolate topping (optional):

2 to 4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped

Directions

Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
Pulse the almonds in a food processor until finely chopped, but not pasty. Stir together the nuts, flour, zest and salt in a large bowl.
Put the sugar, cream, corn syrup and butter in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until mixture comes to a rolling boil and sugar is completely dissolved. Continue to boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla, then pour this mixture into almond mixture and stir just to combine. Set aside until cool enough to handle, about 30 minutes.
Scoop rounded teaspoons (for 3-inch cookies) or rounded tablespoons (for 6-inch cookies) of batter and roll into balls. Place on prepared baking sheet, leaving about 3 to 4 inches between each cookie since they spread as they bake.
Bake 1 pan at a time, until the cookies are thin and an evenly golden brown in color, rotating pans halfway through baking time, about 10 to 11 minutes. Cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to cooling racks. Repeat with remaining batter.

Optional chocolate topping

Put the chocolate in a medium sized, heatproof bowl. Bring a saucepan filled with 1 inch of water to a very low simmer; set the bowl over the water, but not touching the water. Stir the chocolate occasionally until melted and smooth.

For sandwiches, drop about 1/2 teaspoon chocolate onto the flat side of half of the cookies and press remaining halves onto the chocolate covered halves. Return to rack and let chocolate set.
For chocolate decor, drizzle melted chocolate over florentines as desired. Set aside at room temperature until chocolate has set.

Recipe courtesy of http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/florentines-italy-recipe/index.html

Pine Nut Encrusted Halibut

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

A fillet of Resurrection Bay, Alaska halibut in a homemade mayonnaise and sour cream mixture, encrusted with chopped pine nuts and almonds and served on a bed of mixed brown and wild rice. Broccoli is one of the few vegetables we can consistently obtain in good shape in the bush.

I was recently looking around online for the next great place to call home. A top priority for both of us is a place where we can harvest our own fish. With that in mind, as I looked at coastal waters and lakes in other states, it was with a keen eye not only toward some of our preferred fish species (walleye, crappie, perch, striped bass, salmon), but also with an eye toward each state’s fish consumption advisories.

What a shock. In locale after locale, the advice from state departments of natural resources is to limit one’s consumption of local fish. Mercury and PCBs are the chief culprits, but in some places there are other chemicals in the stew. Even DDT remains a problem in some areas. The prospect of living in a place where warnings are to limit one’s consumption of fish to one meal a week–or a couple meals a month–is depressing. (We really hope they keep the Pebble Mine out of Alaska!)

Glad to live in a part of the world where the near-shore fish are still healthful enough to enjoy as often as one cares to. We generally have meals featuring salmon, rockfish or halibut two or three times a week.

There’s nothing to the above halibut dish. In a glass bowl I mixed together equal parts homemade mayonnaise and sour cream. I wanted to add a dash or two of cayenne pepper for a pleasant kick, but having none used a prepared Thai seasoning mix instead along with a couple of grinds of black pepper and a healthy squeeze of lemon juice. I spread this mixture on a halibut fillet, then covered the sauce with chopped pine nuts and almonds, and baked for 15 minutes at 375 degrees in a small, preheated casserole dish in which I had melted butter. Make sure to check while it’s baking to avoid scorching the nuts. Cover with a lid or aluminum foil if the nuts are becoming overly done.

By the way, if you’ve never made mayonnaise, it’s easy–and kind of magical. There are no shortage of instructional videos on the Internet.