Roasted Chilli Pepper Nuts

Roasted Chilli Pepper Nuts

from Red Hot and Green, Janet Hazen, Chronicle Books, 1996.

I read the name of this dish and wanted it straightaway. The book it comes from has lots of interesting items in it all nicely hot to taste. I previously had made peppery cheddar cheese crisps from it and they were delicious. So I looked forward to tasting these chillied nuts.

A look at the ingredient list gave me pause. There were five different chillies in it: ancho, chiltepe, cascabel, guajillo and chipotle. These dried chillies are not readily available here, but I did manage to get hold of the last two. I added dried chillies to these and decided that would have to be it.

After that it was a matter of grinding up all the dried ingredients to make a powder, mixing this with the nuts and adding olive oil and melted butter. Then it went in the oven.

It all turned out to be very tasty, however, if I made it again I would possibly change the way I cooked it. I think the macadamia nuts needed less roasting time that the other nuts so would cook them separately and then mix them in with the others later. They came out a little overcooked. Or I could choose a different nut to add to the mix.

Oddly, with all the chillies in the recipe it was not overly hot, just chilli tasty. And as you picked up the nuts your fingers were coated with the same mixture as the nuts, so obviously you had to lick your fingers.

As some of these books may be out of print if anyone would like a particular recipe, email me (alfcooksvege@ozemail.com.au) and I’ll send an abbreviated version. Of course, the whole book would be better; it’s loaded with other goodies.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔

Peppery Cheese Crisps

Peppery Cheddar Cheese Crisps

from Red Hot and Green, Janet Hazen, Chronicle Books, 1996.

If you like hot, peppery biscuits with a cheese flavour these will go down well. They are strong on the pepper, crisp and cheesy. Each batch that I made was eaten in one session.

At first I thought that the amount of pepper in the recipe seemed excessive but I followed all the instructions carefully and am glad I did. To make the biscuits all that was needed was to mix the ingredients together and mould them into a dough. They were then turned into four rolls of mixture and wrapped in gladwrap to be refrigerated for a few hours. They were then cut into thin slices and baked. They turned out wonderful crisp biscuits with a peppery bite.

With four rolls of mixture it was easy to cook a batch on subsequent days. While the instructions say that it can be kept in the fridge for up to 2 days, I had the last two rolls of mine a little longer and they still turned out okay.

The cookbook has the subtitle ’50 Spicy Vegetarian Recipes’ and is divided into five sections: chillies, peppercorns, mustards, horseradish and ginger. If you like your meals spiced up then this is a find. You need to do some fudging with the ingredients and the measurements as it is very American and with some odd measurements such as one and a quarter sticks of butter (whatever that is). But you can guess at some or the measurements or, when the ingredients are unknown to you, use the internet to work out what they are. Sometimes, as in the case of one recipe I was looking at which has five different varieties of dried chilli, you could have real problems and would either have to forego the particular item or make some clever substitutions.

As some of these books may be out of print if anyone would like a particular recipe, email me (alfcooksvege@ozemail.com.au) and I’ll send an abbreviated version. Of course, the whole book would be better; it’s loaded with other goodies.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔