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Ginger Almond Toffee

12 Dec

It’s not tough to find a specialty chocolate shop in Portland, or in most any other city, I suppose, but it is certainly not easy to find a shop that is not only staffed by some of the friendliest, most knowledgeable chocolate fans around (sidenote: I once knew someone who worked in a chocolate shop and was allergic to chocolate, which is just absurd when you think about it, because wouldn’t you think, and hope, that a chocolate shop, selling chocolate and all, would want to hire people who could, you know, readily sample and talk honestly about  their product without breaking out in a rash?) but also offers a truly creative selection of chocolate treats.  Alma Chocolate, in Northeast Portland, is that chocolate shop.  Sure, everyone makes salted caramels nowadays, but how about habanero caramels?  Or a Thai peanut butter cup, a dream of a chocolate confection that layers your mouth with hits of lime, chili, and ginger?  How about a chevre and black pepper truffle?  Do you see what I mean?  It’s chocolate taken just a step further, from pleasingly creative to utterly inspired.

Though not their most unusual of offerings, Alma’s ginger almond toffee bark is a great example of the way their take on confections can be given a bit of a lift.  The toffee is perfectly melt-in-your-mouth, enveloping large chunks of spicy candied ginger and toasted almonds.  Most people take the timid route with this type of toffee, unfortunately, peppering it only moderately with tiny little bits of ginger, and pulverizing the almonds into an almost powdery layer that only hints at its presence.  But Alma knows better, and they know that if someone wants to eat ginger almond toffee, they want to eat ginger, and almonds, and toffee, each component standing front and center.

It might seem odd to wax rhapsodic about a chocolatier and then immediately turn around and attempt to make their product at home instead of heading out and buying something to support that chocolatier, but, when I have an affection for something, this is how I show it.  If I am truly enamored of something, I like to make it a part of my life, and a toffee of this caliber is most certainly worthy of being part of my life, and the lives of other people I know who happen to be partial to smooth chocolate, rich toffee, snappy ginger, and crisp almonds.

Ginger Almond Toffee

Inspired by Alma Chocolate

1 cup toasted whole almonds

heaping ¼ cup crystallized candied ginger

1 ¼ cups white sugar

¼ cup light brown sugar

3 tablespoons water

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1 teaspoon molasses

¼ teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon baking soda

5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

Separate the almonds into ¾ cup and ¼ cup piles.  Chop the ¾ cup pile very roughly, basically just chopping each almond roughly in half (you want these almonds to maintain a good bite).  Chop the remaining ¼ cup pile into a medium-fine dice and set aside.

Coarsely chop the heaping ¼ cup of crystallized ginger.  Line the bottom of an 8”x13” baking pan with a sheet of parchment paper, and evenly scatter the ¾ cup of almond chunks and the chopped crystallized ginger over the parchment.

In a large, heavy saucepan, combine the white sugar, brown sugar, water, butter, molasses, and sea salt.  Over medium heat, cook the mixture, stirring occasionally with a heatproof spoon or spatula, until it turns a rich, dark golden brown and just reaches a heat of 300 degrees.  (This process can take anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes, depending on the heat of your stove’s burner and the heating capabilities of the saucepan you are using.)  Immediately remove the pan from the heat and quickly stir in the vanilla and baking soda.  The mixture will bubble up when the baking soda is added, so be sure to stir carefully but thoroughly.

Quickly pour the mixture evenly over the almonds and ginger.  When the toffee is still hot but just starting to set (about 2 minutes later), sprinkle the chopped chocolate over the surface of the toffee.  Allow the chocolate to melt from the heat of the toffee, then spread the chocolate evenly over the toffee.  Sprinkle the remaining ¼ cup chopped almonds over the chocolate.

Allow the toffee to cool completely before breaking into pieces.  If you want to speed up the cooling process, you can place the toffee in either the refrigerator (more patience) or the freezer (less patience).

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Roasted Portobello Mushroom Caps with Apple Pecan Stuffing and Caramelized Onion Mushroom Gravy

2 Dec

Recently it occurred to me that when I entered (and subsequently lost) that cooking contest, lo those many weeks ago, I created a recipe that I came to love so much, I just don’t think it would be right to let the recipe languish on the contest’s website.  I don’t think it is against the contest’s rules to take my recipe back, so, if nobody objects, I believe I will.

My hunch is that, if you never mention its absence, nobody will even think to bemoan the lack of meat in this meal.  It really is that fulfilling, and in a way that I think all vegetarian and vegan food should be.  I am not making any substitutions for meat here, I am simply celebrating and building upon what these fresh, natural ingredients have to offer.  No meat required.

The best kind of vegetarian and vegan food, I think, is the type that doesn’t need to be specified as being either.  When you eat something delicious, it should just be delicious, plain and simple, no matter if you eat beef steaks or tofu cakes (or both).  When I was developing this recipe for stuffed portobello mushroom caps, one of my main goals was to make this a dish that could be set upon a big holiday table and entice every single person at that table, omnivore, herbivore, or what have you.  Portobello mushrooms, with their undeniably meaty texture, provide a satisfying meatiness for those who call for such with their meals.  Topped with sautéed cubes of artisan bread, savory apple bits, and crisp, flavorful pecans, you can easily make a main dish out of this.  Add in a rich, thick gravy of caramelized onions, sautéed mushrooms, and heavenly mushroom stock, and the celebratory meal is made complete.

Roasted Portobello Mushroom Caps with Apple Pecan Stuffing

2 large Portobello mushrooms, scrubbed clean

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 ½ cups crusty bread cubes, about ½ inch in diameter

¼ cup finely diced onion

¾ cup chopped, peeled apple pieces, about ¼ inch in diameter

1 teaspoon chopped fresh sage

1 teaspoon chopped fresh Italian parsley

¼ cup mushroom broth (if you can’t find any, vegetable stock will do nicely)

¼ cup roughly chopped pecans

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.  Lightly oil a medium-sized baking dish and set aside.

Remove stems from scrubbed Portobello mushrooms and reserve stems to use later.  Using a spoon, gently scrape out the gills from the underside of each mushroom cap.  Lightly brush both the top and bottom of each cap with olive oil and set aside.

In a medium skillet, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium heat.  When oil is hot, add bread cubes and sauté until crisp and browned, about 4-5 minutes.  Remove bread cubes from pan and set aside.

In the same skillet, heat remaining 1 tablespoon of oil over medium-low heat.  When oil is hot, add onions.  Cook onions, stirring occasionally, until softened and just beginning to brown at edges, about 3 minutes.  Add chopped apples, stirring and sautéing until lightly browned and just beginning to soften, 4-5 minutes.

Add bread cubes back into skillet and stir to combine.  Reduce heat to low and add sage, parsley, and mushroom broth, stirring to combine.  When broth has been absorbed, about 1-2 minutes, remove skillet from heat and stir in pecans.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Fill each mushroom cap with stuffing, dividing as evenly as possible.  The stuffing will mound up quite a bit.  Place stuffed mushrooms in prepared baking dish, and roast in oven for 25-30 minutes, until mushrooms have darkened a bit and the stuffing has become quite crisp on top.

Serve with caramelized onion mushroom gravy.  Serves 2 as a main dish, 4 as a side dish.

Caramelized Onion Mushroom Gravy

2 tablespoons olive oil

½ small yellow onion, sliced into thin ribs

reserved stems from 2 portobello mushrooms, chopped medium-fine

½ teaspoon balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon unbleached all-purpose flour

2 cups mushroom broth (if you can’t find any, vegetable stock will do nicely)

½ teaspoon chopped fresh sage

½ teaspoon chopped fresh Italian parsley

salt and pepper to taste

In a large skillet, heat olive oil over low heat.  Add onions, and slowly caramelize over low heat, 15-20 minutes, stirring frequently.  When onions are soft, brown, and caramelized, add chopped mushrooms.  Cook, stirring frequently, until mushrooms have softened and darkened, 2-3 minutes.  Add balsamic vinegar, and stir to incorporate until vinegar has been absorbed, about 1 minute.

Move onions and mushrooms to the edges of the skillet, leaving an open space in the middle.  Turn heat up to medium.  Sprinkle flour in the open space in the middle of the skillet, and cook flour, stirring frequently, until browned, 3-4 minutes.  Slowly whisk in mushroom broth, incorporating the broth and flour into the onions and mushrooms and whisking to eliminate any lumps of flour that might initially form.  Simmer over medium heat, whisking frequently, until gravy thickens, about 5 minutes.  Add sage and parsley and whisk to incorporate.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Makes a tad more than 1 1/2 cups of gravy.

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Crisp Spiced Nuts and Kicking Off the Holidays

30 Nov

Many years ago, I worked in the book industry.  Part of my job entailed getting to know as-yet-unpublished books, then promoting them as I (read: my employer and the publisher) saw fit.  When you receive an advance copy of a book that is not yet published, you tend to get a slightly different view of the book than most of the other people who later read the book will receive.  Sometimes your advance copy arrives in the form of a simple advance reader, a paperback copy of the book with a mostly spot-on version of the to-be published cover and words contained within. You might also receive an uncorrected proof of the book, meaning a copy of the book that is intact as a story, but not yet fully combed over by its editors and proofreaders (yes, those are two very different jobs) in order to purge the book of slight inconsistencies or errors.  If you are truly ensconced in the game, you might get your hands on a manuscript of a book, which could come in a form of a veritable ream of paper that has either been bound with glue and given a makeshift cover (fancy), stuck into a 3-ring binder (medium fancy), or neatly filed away in a padded manila envelope (not so fancy).

What can be found in any of these copies of pre-published books is sometimes extremely memorable, though more often than not you tend to forget what you’ve seen in them once the final, published version of a book comes out.  Once I read an advance copy of a book that boasted an entire chapter that ended up being removed from its final form.  Sometimes, if you are really paying attention, you can even notice certain sentences or phrases that ended up being altered.

Such was the case for one book that came out over a decade ago and happened to catch my fancy.*  In one particularly memorable paragraph, there reads an opening statement meant to convey a particular person’s penchant for Christmas.  The published line ended up reading, “Our mother was a Christmas extremist.”  To the point, for sure, but the opening sentence in the advance copy I read months before the book came out had me laughing out loud.  The original opening sentence?  “Our mother was a Christmas crackhead.”

Now, I can see why an editor would want someone to change that line.  If you are coming from the standpoint of someone who thinks you can convey that thought in a more conventional manner, with words that are perhaps not as hilariously pithy (to some, perhaps not to others), then sure, by all means, there is a case for changing the last word.  But coming from a strictly deadpan comedic standpoint, the original line is a total keeper.  To this day, I still remember that original sentence.  Every year, right around December, it never fails to pop into my head.  And the reason is because I, too, am a total Christmas crackhead.

I freaking love Christmas.  I love Christmas baking.  I love Christmas lights.  I love Christmas trees.  I love seeing throngs of people walking around wearing scarves and wool coats and complaining about the crowds of people pulsing around them.  I love Christmas display windows, I love Christmas toy drives, I love thinking up as many reasons as I can to surprise someone with Christmas treats.  See what I mean?  Total Christmas crackhead.

Which brings me to the point of this whole post.  My friends, have I got some Christmas recipes for you.  Using Christmas as my excuse, I am here to pummel you with recipe after recipe for the holiday season.  You want pies?  There will be pies.  Tarts?  Yes.  Snacks?  Oh, yes.  It is my sole intention to completely exhaust your kitchen this Christmas season, and to share with you all my complete and utter devotion to the joys of Christmas as it relates to your kitchen.  And your belly.

To start things off, I’ve got this superb recipe for crisp spiced nuts.  With their spicy cayenne kick and savory-sweet glaze, they not only make a perfect snack to nibble with a glass of wine or a cocktail, but, portioned out and dressed up in a nice gift box or jar, they make a fantastic host or hostess gift.  Keep in mind, however, that if you intend to share these nuts, you’d better start giving them away as soon as you possibly can after making them.  Wait too long, and you are likely to end up eating them all yourself, such is the sheer intensity of their tasty allure.  I have been known to (inadvisably) eat these for breakfast.  While I can’t say it was the best decision I ever made, I also can’t admit to completely regretting it, since, god help me, it was a mighty delicious breakfast while it lasted.

*I am really sorry, but I am fairly certain that I would upset someone by revealing which books this is.  The line was changed for a reason, so I probably shouldn’t be waxing nostalgic about something not meant to see the light of day.  I do not wish to cause any hurt feelings.

Crisp Spiced Nuts

(a recipe from my husband’s family)

2 large egg whites

1 teaspoon flaky sea salt

¾ cup sugar

2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

2 tablespoons sweet Hungarian paprika

1 to 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper (the determined amount will depend a lot on the heat of your cayenne pepper—ours is quite hot, so I tend to use 1 heaping teaspoon, which provides enough heat to flavor the nuts without making me uncomfortable while I eat them)

4 ½ cups nuts (I like to use a mix of almonds, hazelnuts, and pecans)

¾ stick (6 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a large bowl, beat egg whites until very foamy.  Gradually beat in sugar, Worcestershire, paprika, salt, and cayenne.  Stir in nuts and melted butter.

Spread nuts in a single layer on a large baking sheet or roasting pan.  Bake in middle of oven, stirring every 10 minutes, until the nuts become crisp when cooled, about 25-40 minutes.  To test a nut for crispness, carefully remove it from the oven and allow it to cool slightly.  The nut’s glaze should turn firm and crisp after 2 or 3 minutes.

Remove nuts from oven when they still appear sticky, but a tested nut confirms that the glaze will turn crisp when cooled.  Spread the nuts on a sheet of foil to cool, separating the nuts as much as possible so they don’t harden into big clumps.

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