Spiced Nuts

I’ve always been a bit sceptical of free nuts at the bar put out by seemingly charitable landlords. I know the idea is to fill your punters with salty snacks to get them drinking more beer, but I can’t help think of the stories I’ve read about bar nuts being found to be covered in a bewildering cocktail of drinkers piss. For some reason this always puts me off….

Anyway, with friends over for drinks later in the week I figured it was the perfect opportunity to have a go at making Gordon’s own version of the infamous bar snack. It has been a hectic week or so at PubFood@Home mansions, so I was looking forward to getting stuck back into the cookbook and rustling up his simple recipe for Spiced Nuts.

The ingredients for the nuts are as basic as any of the recipes are likely to get, being just plain blanched nuts, icing sugar and cayenne pepper.

Gordon’s recipe calls for a mix of peanuts, hazelnuts and cashews, but being the generous host that I am, I decided to leave out the peanuts and go for a mix heavy on the cashews. I know, I know – you are screaming “But what about the credit crunch”. What can I say, my decadence knows no bounds (well, that and my local Tesco was out of peanuts).

Anyway, the first job was to mix the nuts in a bowl with some icing sugar, cayenne pepper and a little water (which would help the caramalisation process). Being a fan of chilli heat I decided to forego the recipe’s advice as to the amount of cayenne and I gave the nuts a liberal dousing of spice.

The mixture was then seasoned with plenty of salt and a little black pepper and added to a hot pan. I continually moved the mixture around the pan for about 4 minutes until the sugars were caramelised and the nuts had begun to take on a bit of colour.

Using a baking sheet, I spread the nuts out in a single layer and popped them into a really low oven to dry out. Every ten minutes or so I turned the nuts to make sure I got an even colour and after about 45 minutes in the oven they were done. You can see how they have turned a nice deep sticky shade of dark red.

Before:

After:

I put most of the finished spiced nuts into an airtight container to keep for my drinks later in the week. With the rest, I made up a small bowl and took them down to The Newman Arms, one of my local pubs, for  the bar-flys there to try out.

How did they taste? Well, I really liked them, but let’s just say the extra cayenne had given them a real kick. “Shit they are hot”,  I think were the exact words I got from Tony. As for one of the other regulars, who assured me he was a big fan of free bar snacks, he seemed to think they were “missing a certain something”. I just didn’t have the heart to tell him what….