Wine and Walnuts

On Christmas Eve I had the delicious French sparkler I wrote about in Wednesday’s post, paired with chilied almonds, pancetta biscuits, pimiento cheese and crackers, and Belgian truffles.  It was a small snack-feast for friends, and just the way I like to celebrate on Christmas Eve.  And a great way to toast/celebrate a glorious three day weekend, too.   : )

I’ve written about the pancetta biscuits recipe before, so I’ll cover the chilied almonds here.  My best friend shared this recipe with me a few years ago, but I’d never made it, and decided this was the year.  Oh my gosh, what a simple and delicious snack!  And really, just perfect for a Christmas Eve kind of thing. They are so damn good, in fact, that I am eating some right now, as I write this, being ever so careful not to get chili dust in the keyboard. 

Recipe:  Chilied Almonds

Ingredients:

· 1 egg white
· 2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
· ½ teaspoon garlic powder
· 1 teaspoon chili powder
· 2 teaspoons ground cumin (fresh ground from cumin seeds, if possible)
· 1 teaspoon salt
· 1 pound whole unblanched almonds (about 4 scant cups)

Preparation:

· Line rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil and spray foil with vegetable cooking spray
· Whisk egg white until frothy in large mixing bowl
· Combine pepper flakes, garlic powder, chili powder, cumin and salt in a small bowl and stir to blend
· Add seasonings along with almonds to bowl with egg white; toss and stir until nuts are well coated with mixture
· Spread almonds evenly on prepared pan.  Bake on center shelf at 275 degrees for 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes
· Remove and cool to room temperature

Almonds can be stored in airtight container up to three weeks.  Makes 1 pound.

Tips:

· As for the instruction above about using cumin from fresh ground cumin seeds if possible, I don’t know how much of a difference it makes in flavor, since I didn’t do it.  My best friend who passed this recipe along doesn’t use this instruction either; the standard ground cumin by McCormick’s was what I used, and the almonds were, if I do say so, fabulous!

· I also didn’t line my baking sheet with foil and spray it with vegetable oil; I simply placed the almonds directly on a large pizza baking sheet, and it worked just fine.  The only thing was, the first time I stirred the almonds, they stuck just a little to the baking sheet, but after that, no problem.  They turned out wonderfully; I was very pleased.

Good stuff, and perfect with refreshing French sparkling wine!

Tags: chilied almonds recipe, food and wine pairing, sparkling wine

This entry was posted by Kimberly Houston on Saturday, December 26th, 2009 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Food and Wine Pairing Ideas, Recipe with Wine Match. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.