Spiced & Candied Pistachios

Going Nuts for Santa ~ My Click Entry for December

Taken with a Nikon D50, 50mm Prime lens F1.8, natural winter light

Seasons Greetings & Happy New Years from Archana's Culinary Adventures!

I have been pretty absent from the food blog world in the last couple of months. Commenting on a few blogs here and there, not replying to comments on my own blog and worst of all, not doing weekly updates on good food on my own blog. As we near the end of the year, I have to evaluate how much energy do I want to put towards this? Do I want to food blog to have an interaction with the bloggers? What are my priorities? What is most important to me? As most of you food bloggers know it takes amazing amounts of energy to keep up a food blog with witty writing, good recipes, fantastic photos. I truly didn't appreciate what it took to do this before I embarked on my own blog this year. The realizations that I am coming is this: I cannot put pressure on myself to "keep up with the foodies". I have to do what I can do at my own pace and the cost might be that I don't get the same stats as my favorite food bloggers or the interactions of a super online community but I do what I can and if one, two or three of you out there read it and enjoy it, that's good too! One of my favorite blog events this past fall has been CLICK. Bee and Jai have constantly amazed me with their passion for cooking, art of photography, travel and thought provoking articles. I started out this article with a recipe of Pistachio Brittle but after making only one version of the brittle to my satisfaction and "failing" in all 5 other attempts, I realized what I had in hand was a super recipe for Pistachio Candy. So instead of chucking out the ruined sugar concoction, I used it to my advantage and this year became my "gift of the season" for family and friends. For some reason, whether it was the pan or proportions or type of sugar I used to make the brittle, I did not succeed in getting the syrup to the right color or texture. I am still annoyed with not knowing why I was not successful and if any of you have the secret to the perfect brittle making success, please let me know.

Anyway, onto my recipe for candied pistachios. The recipe I have provided is for a rather large batch. You lower the quantities in proportion and you will get good results as well.

Spiced & Candied Pistachios Recipe

• 5 cups Unsalted Raw Pistachios (I used the shelled variety from trader joes)


• 5 cups Sugar


• 1 cup Water


• 1 pinch Saffron Threads


• 1 tablespoon powdered cardamom


• Trace butter for greasing

Method:

Dry roast the pistachios in a heavty duty pan on medium-low till lightly brown. Mix cardamom with the nuts and set aside. Grease a large baking or roasting tray with butter. Put a large pot on medium-high heat and add sugar plus water. Let the sugar melt completely and start to boil. Keep the sugar syrup boiling and stirring till it gets translucent. Continue boiling the mixture and you will notice the syrup start to thicken, add saffron and keep stirring and scraping the sides. The minute you notice the syrup to cloud and have lots of bubbles (~12 to 15 minutes), add the pistachio mixture. From here you have to work rather quickly, mix the pistachios into the syrup to coat evenly and spread onto to the greased tray. Using a flat knife or spatula to speedily spread the nuts to cool. Once they are spread apart, break off into individual pieces and let it cool and serve. Store in an airtight or ziploc container till serving.

Some notes:

- The more processed and finer the sugar, the "whiter" the pistachios are. The first picture in this post is created with an organic, unprocessed sugar and the pistachios didn't turn out as brilliant white as the first batch (second picture) I made with regular white sugar.

-If by chance your sugar syrup turns amber and clear, you can end up with pistachio brittle instead of candy. That too is a pretty tasty and don't fret, follow the same instructions but instead of breaking off individual pieces of candy, you will have chunks of brittle.

- I put the nuts into a ziploc bag and inserted into colorful bags as yummy holiday treats for friends and family. The recipe takes less than 20 minutes to complete from start to finish and a huge hit.

My first picture goes to Bee and Jai for this month's CLICK event. Happy Holidays and Warmest Wishes for a great 2008!