Fermented Pickles (Half-Sours)

Somewhere along the line, some brilliant hunter-gathered figured out that if he took the seeds from a wild vegetable and stuck them in the ground, they would produce more of that plant.  He hurried to tell his tribe of the discovery, who rejoiced in the bounty.  And one night about a week after his first harvest, he came home from chasing gazelles all day to find a bunch of rotten vegetables sitting around.  That night, he was beaten with reeds by the village chieftain, because the tribe would go hungry.  So the next, smarter person came along and thought, "we need a way to keep all of these things longer", and hurriedly set about the task of preserving food.  And so, because he did not know the location of the nearest supermarket and his internet was out, he learned through experiment that if the vegetables were packed in a salt water brine, they would soon become pickled, lasting through until the next season in a bacteria-thwarting environment.  This man was revered by all, and lived a happy life until being eaten by a bear at the ripe old age of 28.  This was a long time ago, after all.

That's probably not the exact history of pickling - it was apparently worked out in India about 4,000 years ago with cucumbers.  Since then, many different cultures figured this out this trick, bringing us the Korean kimchi, Japanese tsukemono, German sauerkraut, Eastern European beets, Italian giardiniera, and American pickled okra and watermelon, to name just a small handful of what's out there.  Not to mention Scandinavian pickled herring, American pickled pig's feet, and a slew of other pickled protein parts that the world has come to love, or at least tolerate.

Pickling magic is actually quite simple, and you can play it one of two ways:

1. A 'chemical' pickling can be accomplished with an acid, by soaking the vegetables in a mixture of vinegar and spices, then putting them in sterilized jars with some form of preservative if a longer shelf life is desired.  This preservative used to be alum, but since it probably gives you brain damage, commercial shops tend to use sodium benzoate.  This process can be accomplished in a matter of hours, as with quick-pickled American watermelon or Sichuan bamboo shoots.
2. A 'natural' pickling is accomplished by leaving the vegetables in a brine of salt water and spices, where natural yeasts and bacteria ferment the pickles over a longer period.  This process can take days, weeks, or even months, depending on the desired result.  This would include kimchi, sauerkraut (buried in the yard for months), most refrigerated cucumber pickles, and of course the Chinese Thousand Year Eggs, which is a bit of a special case.

I have tried quick pickling with vinegar before, but it just didn't do it for me.  It's the difference between the non-refrigerated pickles that are yellow-ish green inside, and the refrigerated ones that are still a pale white green inside.  This, to me, not only looks more like food, but I find that it also tastes more 'pickley' - crisp, tangy, salty, not sweet, and not sharp unless it's your own choosing.  So here I present to you my first experiment in naturally pickled cucumbers, fermented in brine rather than steeped in vinegar.

Naturally Fermented Half-Sour Pickles
Modified from multiple sources

• 2 lbs Kirby cucumber, unwaxed
• 8 cloves of garlic, peeled
• 1 tbsp black peppercorns
• 1/4 cup (4 tbsp) non-iodized salt, ideally pickling salt
• 6 cups of water

For equipment, you will also need:

• 1 adequately large, non-reactive, food safe container, with a lid
• 1 plate or bowl which is slightly smaller than the size of the container
• Small finger / prep bowl

Let's start with the ingredients.  Why Kirby cucumbers?  Because they are perfect for pickling - right size, right moisture content, VERY crunchy.  There's a reason they're also known as 'pickling cucumbers'.  Next, the salt.  I would go with pickling salt, which is much more fine than table salt.  It also contains no iodine, which supposedly avoids the white haze my liquid had (although this doesn't affect the product).  If you can't find pickling salt, go with non-iodized table salt.  I omit dill because I wanted to try the dill-free version, and I'm upping the garlic I actually used by 100% because I thought it needed more, and will plan to add more in the next round.

Scrub your cucumbers to remove any residues, and trim off the blossom end if it's still on there (it will rot).  In a large saucepan, warm the water and dissolve in the salt, allowing to come completely back to room temperature before using.  Once done, add the garlic and peppercorns, and pack in the cucumbers densely.  Weight these down by placing the small bowl / plate / whatever over the tops, then put the prep bowl on top of that, and fill with water.  This needs to keep all cucumbers fully submerged, so make sure you get things right.

The submerged pickles, trapped by a small prep bowl.  I later added a plasticware lid to keep the pickles better submerged

Put the container in a warm-ish place (I'll make up a number and say 60-75 F), and let them sit, undisturbed, for 3 days.  After this time, you may see some foam starting to collect on the top of the container.  If so, skim it off.  If not, do not despair - I didn't see any, and I lived to tell the tale.  Regardless, let your cucumbers rest in the brine for 7-14 days, checking on them periodically.  You can open up the container and have a look if you like.  Make sure to skim any 'white foam' off the surface of the liquid, which is a perfectly normal occurrence that looks suspiciously like mold, which is probably natural bacteria eating away happily at the cucumber.

Oh man, you're going to eat that?  Are you crazy?!  It's fine - this is just a sign of the bacterial / fungal activity going on in the brine, and is a sign of a healthy fermentation.  So long as the pickles are under the level of the water and not rotting above the surface, you're good.  Just skim this off every few days.  FYI, mine are floating only because I had just moved the bowl

When done, place the container in the fridge for 3 days to stop the fermentation process, and then keep in there for a few weeks while you eat them.  Ah, but how do you know when they are done?  Well, follow your nose.  If the cucumbers smell like pickles and you've had to remove some foam, you're probably done. If it smells like nothing, give it some more time.  This isn't a science, and nobody's going to give you a score.  You eat them when you're damned good and ready to.

I call my pickles 'half sours' because I put in less salt than other recipes, although more than some I saw online.  If you want to go crazy, add more salt, but do so at your own risk - they're going to be mighty sour.  You could also add a full bunch of dill to the pickles to make the more common dill half-sours, and you could also add something spicy to kick up the punch a bit.  I didn't think mine needed any tweaking, but will keep experimenting and will post the results in updates.

Update 8/5/13: made these again with pickling salt - 7 c. tap water, 4 tbsp pickling salt.  Way too salty, and then they turned mushy.  Need to experiment further.

30-Minute Mozzarella

If you're like me, you tend to let a good amount of food spoil and then experience "first-world guilt", described as a pang somewhere near your overly plump stomach that makes you feel terrible about wasting food while others are starving.  Well, here's an interesting way to prevent that, which (it turns out) has been what Europeans have been doing for centuries - make cheese out of your milk.  There are plenty of reasons to do this:

• It's cost-effective
• You have control over exactly what goes into the finished product
• Homemade cheese is guaranteed to separate out the lactose-containing elements and trap them in the whey, while mass-produced cheeses don't always do this
• It tastes amazing if you do it right
• It's really freaking cool to see this happen

I got this recipe out of the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, who in turn got it from the "Cheese Queen", Ricki Carroll (www.cheesemaking.com).  It's basically verbatim, although presented as something in between the two recipes they each list.  I made this twice in two days - the first time to learn what NOT to do, the second time to get a good product.  FYI, things not to do here: don't use cheesecloth just because you think cheesecloth is used in the manufacture of all cheese.  Don't overstir after adding rennet.  Don't overheat on the stove.  Don't forget to buy gloves before kneading.  And definitely don't rush the cutting of the curd before it has set - that's the #1 most important tip here.  Patience is a virtue, and it was only about 2 minutes of patience.

The ingredient list is incredibly short, and the equipment list is similar.  All you will need for hardware is a large (1.5+ gallon) pot, an instant thermometer, and a microwave-safe bowl.  Ironically, cheesecloth was not necessary for this, despite my having bought some expressly for this purpose.  And the ingredients require just four things: milk, salt, rennet, and citric acid.  To find those last two, I suggest a homebrew store or health food store / co-op for the rennet, and, surprisingly, a hardware store or craft store for the citric acid.  Look in the canning section, citric acid is used in jam- and jelly-making as well as canning a number of other products, so it's not impossible to find.  And by the way, if you see rennet's lesser cousin, junket, don't even bother - just keep searching until you find the real deal, which is much more powerful.

And now, a history on cheese.  Turns out that long ago, people used to carry around their beverages not in Nalgenes and Siggs, but in cow stomachs.  Well, folks noticed that when they put their liquids into these stomachs, for some strange reason the milk kept turning solid, separating the liquid whey from the more solid curds.  The reason was not apparent until later, but it had to do with enzymes found in the cow's stomach lining, which eventually were discovered, named "rennet", and sold to cheesemakers the world around.  If you are daring, feel free to look up how they acquire rennet from a cow's stomach, but you should probably just take my word and be grateful that now you can buy this ready-made, and note that these days you are much more likely to find a rennet derived from vegetables or even microbes than you are from cow's stomach.

The cut curd, sitting in whey, waiting to be made into deliciousness.  There's some old nursery rhyme about this.  Something about muppets and spiders.

I learned an interesting fact about the name "mozzarella".  Turns out that it comes from the Italian verb "mozzare", meaning "to cut".  This is because of how they form the cheese into balls when everything is working perfectly, where they fold the cheese over itself a few times, form into a tight ball, and then pinch the cheese ball from the main strand before storing.  The cheese is closely related to scamorza cheese, which is derived from "scamozzata", which translates as "without a shirt".  Love it.

30-Minute Mozzarella

by Ricki Carroll, by way of Barbara Kingsolver

• 1 gallon milk.  This can be whole, part skim, whatever, just so long as it isn't ultra-pasteurized.  Go with raw if you're daring, but if you get sick and die, it's totally not my fault.  Learn from Louis Pasteur, they didn't name the process after him for nothing.
• 1.5 tsp citric acid, dissolved in 1/4 cup cool distilled water
• Rennet (liquid is best, tablets work if that's all you can find), dissolved in another 1/4 cup cool distilled water.  1/4 tsp for liquid, or 1/2 tablet for pellets.
• Salt, to taste

Just four ingredients, all shown here.  And if you couldn't guess that 'milk' was one, you should  probably search for other hobbies, like bricklaying or popping bubble wrap.

Add the milk to the pot and place over medium-low heat.  Add citric acid once milk gets to 55 deg. F and stir.  The mixture will begin to curdle as it gets warmer, which is really cool to watch.

When the mixture gets to 88 deg F, add the rennet dissolved in water, and stir in with a spoon in a gentle up-down motion.  Remove from the heat, and let sit for 5 minutes to set up.  Do NOT stir during this period.

Add the dissolved rennet at 88-90 deg F, then kill heat and leave alone.  Better to pour this over a slotted spoon to distribute quickly and evenly, then stir with an up-and-down motion.  This photo is from my first attempt, not the better second attempt shown below.

Now, a question you might have is this:

"I can see the cheese curdling with just the citric acid - why should I bother adding rennet as well?"

Well, Mr. Know-It-All, it turns out you're right, but only partially.  If you just add citric acid, you will be making an 'acid-set cheese', which is what cream cheese, ricotta, and paneer are.  But adding rennet will give you much more complexity of flavor, so don't skip it or your cheese will be bland, and will take quite a while to set up.

Once the curd (solid portion) has set, the whey (liquid portion) will become mostly clear.  If it's not yet clear, allow the mixture to sit a few minutes longer.  Most soft cheeses are actually made by allowing the enzyme in the rennet to work overnight, so don't worry about letting this sit for a few minutes extra.  But once you're satisfied, cut the cheese into 1" curd squares with a big knife.  Place the pot with the sliced curd back on the stove and heat to 105 deg F.  Once heated, remove with a slotted spoon, or a spider if you have one, to a large collander.

Grab a large knife that can reach to the bottom of the pan and cut into medium cubes.  This will allow more whey to be released, and promote even heating

Remove to a bowl with a slotted spoon.  The curd will have the consistency of a runny custard.

Allow the curds to drain off as much of the whey as they're prepared to give off.  Once curds are all removed from the pot and drained, place the bowl in the microwave and heat for 60 seconds on high.  This will wring out more of the whey, which you can pour off before kneading the curd slightly.  Discard any remaining whey that forms, then heat again for 35 seconds.  Knead again, pour off whey again.  Do this one last time for 35 seconds, kneading and pouring off any whey.  This is going to be knuckle-searing hot when you're done, so be prepared.

Drain off the whey as you continue heating.  Note: this cheese is for friends and family, who can handle arm hair in their cheese.

Continue kneading to release more whey and get to a shiny ball state.  This isn't ready yet.

Now the next fun part - stretching and kneading the curd.  First, add salt to taste (I added about 1 tbsp to a gallon's worth of milk after I saw a video from BelGioioso that called for 1 tbsp per pound of curd), and knead the curd a few times.  It should be around 135 deg F for this to work.  As you stretch the dough, it should easily elongate, rather than snap apart.  If it stretches, keep forming into a ball and stretching a few times to align the protein strands.  If it doesn't, give it a bit more kneading until you get that firm skin and shiny surface to the ball, then try stretching again.

Almost there...

...nope.  Needs more kneading.

Getting pretty close...

Bingo!  This is the look you want for the cheese.

Only do this a few times - the longer you do it, the more of a string cheese consistency you will have.  If the curd isn't stretching, reheat again and try after warmed up again.  After you've stretched the curd a number of times, it should begin to look shiny and elastic, and will stretch easily, like taffy.  Pull this into a long rope, and  shape however you like.  This time I spun it around itself and then just folded it up, like a pretzel.

Once the cheese looks shiny and is at the right temperature (135 F or so), you should be able to do this.  Bring people in to watch.

You can braid it, or form back into a ball.  If you  really want traditional "mozza"-rella,  you have to make a long ribbon, then form into balls and pinch them from the ribbon.

Or form into whatever shape you like.  I don't care.

Once you're satisfied with the shape, drop the finished cheese into a bath of cold water.  This will stop the cooking process.  You can now slice and eat immediately (best option), or wrap in plastic wrap and store for up to a week in the fridge.

Drop in cold water to stop the cooking.

Slice and serve, or store in plastic wrap for a week.  If it's around that long.

And here's something you could do with your mozzarella, if you were so inclined.

Here's another: Italian sausage sandwich melts

And a classic: insalata caprese di tomate e mozzarella

Pad See Ew (Soy Sauce Noodles) and Homemade Sriracha

Pad See Ew is one of those ubiquitous Thai dishes you always see hidden on a Thai restaurant menu.  You've got your red and green curries, your Pad Thai, maybe some Pad Prik King or Gai Himmaparn, and this.  It's easy to translate - "pad" means stir-fried, and "see ew" means soy sauce.  Not much left to the imagination.  And the ingredient list essentially doesn't disappoint - noodles, meat, a few other things, and soy sauce.  Ah, but not just any soy sauce, as we will get to shortly.  It's been influenced by the Chinese, which explains why they're using the phrase "see ew", a Southern Chinese term for soy sauce, and also why Chinese broccoli is used here but in basically no other Thai staple dish I've yet come across.  I tried making this a number of times a few years ago with mixed success, then I went off into a cave and thought about what I did wrong, then looked up a ton of different recipes, and finally I took a nap.  When I woke up I assembled this new one.

Restaurant-quality.  Not something I throw out lightly.  And it's not often that people tell me to quit my day job and open a restaurant after dinner.  But that happened when I made these soy sauce noodles, after my adjustments to the recipe, my ingredients, and my process in order to best capture the flavors and textures of this dish.  Every bit of this is a spot-on copy of the best soy sauce noodles I have ever eaten which, if you haven't done so, I highly recommend you try.  I will make it a point to comment on where I have made tweaks, and what is a critical detail in making this dish.  Don't cut corners, look for the right ingredients, and you'll pull through.


Pad See Ew (Soy Sauce Noodles)
Adapted heavily from RealThaiRecipes.com

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
• 1 tablespoon thinly sliced shallot
• 1/2 cup pork (or chicken), thinly sliced and cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1 cup wide rice noodles, FRESH (dried is just not going to cut it if you want the real deal)
• 1 generous cup chinese broccoli
• 1 large egg
• 1 tbsp black soy sauce
• 2 tbsp white soy sauce
• 1 tbsp white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon white pepper powder

First, gather your ingredients.  This may take some time - you need to find shallots, Chinese broccoli, and things called 'white' and 'black' soy sauce.  I know what you're thinking: you've got some 'black' soy sauce already, so what the heck is white soy sauce?  Well, you are wrong.  If you have soy sauce, you have 'white' soy sauce.  Or 'light' soy sauce, which has nothing to do with 'low sodium' soy sauce.  'Black' aka 'dark' aka 'sweet' soy sauce is made by adding sugar or molasses to the soy beans before fermentation, and lends a strong sweetness and a thick consistency to the finished product.  It is aged longer than the light soy sauce, and is less salty.  It is the primary ingredient in Pad See Ew, so if you can't find it locally, order it before you make this dish.  I recommend Healthy Boy brand if you can find it.  Let's take a look at these products:

Various soy sauces.  From left to right: a) low/less sodium, sometimes called "lite", not to be confused with b) "light" or "white" soy sauce (basically just regular soy sauce), c) Thai "black" soy sauce (siew dam in Thai) aka "sweet" soy sauce, which is essentially the same as d) Chinese "dark" soy sauce

Since you're using fresh noodles, which you can purchase at the Asian grocery store, separate them from each other, and place them on a plate.  Now, if yours were like mine, you got them refrigerated, and they're a big stuck together wad that doesn't look like people food - it looks like a bunch of squid.  I tried warming in the microwave and ended up getting as far as separating the rolls from each other, then giving up and cutting them into what would later become small rice pillows.  But next time I will soak them in cold water (cold to prevent further cooking), then coax them apart gently and dry them separately from each other.

They may look like squids, but they are in fact rice noodles, all bunched together.  Soak in cold water to unravel them.

If you absolutely can't find these and end up using dried, boil them for 6 minutes, drain in cold water, and rinse 2-3 times until fully chilled.  RIGHT BEFORE cooking, remove them to colander to drain for about 1 minute.  Don’t let them sit out to dry.

Cut the Chinese Broccoli stems at an angle so they cook easier, into about 2″ (5cm) long pieces towards the top, and smaller at the stems.  Cut on a bias for nice looking pieces. Make sure to clean well.

Heat a large nonstick saute pan on the highest heat you've got.  When sufficiently hot, add the oil and swirl to coat.  Add the garlic and shallots, and fry until lightly browned and fragrant, about 15-20 seconds.

Add the pork (or chicken) and fry until cooked through. Keep stirring so the garlic doesn’t burn.

Now add the noodles.  Don't worry about the other ingredients, we'll get there.  Keep stirring so they don’t stick.  Add the soy sauces, sugar and white pepper. Mix well.  Your goal here is to infuse the soy sauce flavor into the noodle but not into the veggies or egg.  So stir this around, let it absorb into the noodles, and continue.

Let the soy sauce get into those noodles

Crack the egg into the pan on top of the oil. Scramble in the pan and let sit until solid.  Break up with a spatula.

Add the Chinese Broccoli, and mix well. You may need to add a little bit of water so everything cooks and doesn’t stick.  Don’t add so much that the noodles get clumpy though - maybe around 1 teaspoon at a time.  As soon as broccoli is cooked, turn off heat and plate immediately.

Dish out and serve with soy sauce, sugar, vinegar, chili powder and white pepper so you can flavor to your taste preference at the table.

Note: If cooking more than one serving, cook them one at a time. If you cook too many noodles in the pan, you'll get a big sticky glob.

Homemade Chili-Garlic Sauce (Sriracha)

If you have a blender and 2 minutes, you can make this.  Put 8 red jalapenos, 2 cloves of garlic, and 1 tsp salt into the blender.  You may want to do obvious things like take the stems off your peppers and maybe peel the skin from the garlic, but only if you want this to be, you know, edible.  Once blended, pour this mix into a jar and top with 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar - enough to cover the pepper mix.  Let sit for a few minutes, and you're good to go!  Should keep basically indefinitely.

True Maraschino cherries

In part of my adventures in mixology, I discovered that Maraschino cherries are somewhat of a necessity in old fashioned cocktails (including the Old-Fashioned).  But I was horrified to discover that those gross, bright red cherries which we call Maraschino cherries and put on sundaes for children are actually first treated to leach out all of the color, then soaked in dyes and sugar to put back whatever artificial qualities the manufacturers want.  The FDA even got a hand in this definition!  Here is the 'official' FDA modern Maraschino cherry definition:

"The term "Maraschino Cherries" is regarded as the common or usual name of an article consisting of cherries which have been dyed red, impregnated with sugar and packed in a sugar sirup [sic] flavored with oil of bitter almonds or a similar flavor."

Did you know that before chemists got a hold of this once delicious product, that Maraschino cherries were made by soaking them in a delicious liqueur named - gasp - Maraschino?!  Yup, there's a liqueur out there made with Marasca cherries and cherry pits, with a delicious nutty, fruity flavor, which used to be the sole way of making these bad boys.  And I highly recommend you try this out, stop eating once-whitened bright red cherries, and upgrade the quality of your drinks to impress your guests.  Because trust me, these will.

True Maraschino cherries - well worth the effort, mostly in finding Maraschino liqueur

True Maraschino Cherries
from Bill Norris of Fino Austin

• 1 pound sweet cherries (I used Rainier, but you should use Bing)
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tsp fresh squeezed lemon juice
• 1 cinnamon stick
• pinch freshly grated nutmeg
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup Maraschino liqueur, preferably Luxardo

Okay, you probably looked at this, and thought - what the heck is Maraschino?  Well, here it is:

Luxardo, the original Maraschino liqueur

Go looking for it, and you will hopefully find it hiding in an upscale liquor store.  Once you've got it, wash and pit the cherries.  Invest in some form of cherry pitter, such as this guy:

Pit your cherries.  Keep the stems on if you like.

In a saucepan, combine all ingredients besides the cherries and the liqueur.  Bring all to a rolling boil.  When the liquid begins to boil, reduce the heat to medium, and simmer the cherries in the liquid for 5-7 minutes.

Remove from the heat, adding the liqueur (so as not to boil off the alcohol), stir, and let cool slightly.  Once cooled, transfer cherries and liquid to a clean jar and refrigerate, uncovered, until cool to the touch.  Now cap and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks.

Bay Rum Aftershave

Witch Hazel - let's talk about it.  Have you ever bought any?  Do you know what it's for?  Did you think it's just some kind of weird old lady remedy for long-forgotten diseases, like scurvy, consumption, and the grippe?  If you answered 'yes' to these, read on.

No so long ago, I got my first straight razor shave.  Afterwards, the barber had all kinds of bottles of homemade tinctures, and he splashed some on my face and sent me on my way.  Well, I was bound and determined to find out what that was all about, and I think I narrowed it down to a couple of things - holy water, hyena mucous, or some kind of witch hazel mixture.  Figured maybe I'd start with the witch hazel one.

Witch-hazel is a deciduous shrub or small tree, and the leaves and bark are then made into witch hazel.  This was used by Native Americans for many years, having astringent properties used for everything from treating bug bites to curing hemorrhoids.  Frequent on the list of uses is in aftershave products.

Excited to use a product I've never tried, that also claims to prevent "sweating of the face", I ran out and bought a bottle, and tried using it straight.  Well, bad news - this stuff smells fairly odd in raw form, somewhere between rubbing alcohol and raw sweet potatoes.  So I went back and discovered that people using it as the base of aftershave, not exclusively.  I found a few recipes, merged them and added a few things, and this is the first attempt I made at an aftershave with a witch hazel base.  The result?  A spiced yet mellow concoction that I think smells suspiciously like Old Spice, but much more toned down.  It was a bay rum scent, literally made from bay and rum (and some other stuff).

Mystery vials - they look pretty cool next to my bathroom sink

This is witch-hazel, the plant from which the product of the same name is made.

Bay Rum Aftershave

• 2 cups of witch hazel extract
• 1 ounce of rum
• zest from one orange
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 3-5 cloves
• 3-5 whole allspice
• 2 bay leaves, dry or fresh (or bay essential oil, if you have it)
• Mason jar

Place all ingredients in the glass jar, seal, and place in a dark spot for two weeks.

How the heck are these things going to work together?

...oh, I see.  Put them in a jar and make them play nice.

After the two weeks, filter through cheesecloth once or twice, and transfer to a small bottle.  Apply after shaving or use as an astringent.

After two weeks and some gentle shaking occasionally, the scents mellow significantly

Filter through cheesecloth

Transfer to a small bottle and use as you would aftershave

If you would like to go all out, add a half teaspoon each of aloe vera and glycerin, to really make your skin feel amazing afterwards.  I didn't have either of these, but I will invest for the next batch.  New recipes to follow!

Candied Pecans

Pecan lovers of the world unite!  Here's a simple recipe for candied pecans which you can make in just over an hour.  I hesitate to give this one out because it's so good, but since it was passed to me by a family friend I feel comfortable passing it to the rest of you.  Just don't tell anyone!  You can give these out as gifts, go to town on them yourself, use them as a salad topping, or shove them up your nose.  I don't really care what you do with them, but I will insist that they are better when taken orally.

This recipe post is a reboot from December 2011, but since I learned how to use my camera a bit better since then, I'm reposting with edited visuals.

My 2012 batch of spiced pecans.  Coming your way soon, if you've been good

Candied Pecans

by Robin Connell

• 1 egg white
• 3 to 4 cups pecan halves 
• 1/2 cup sugar
•  3/4 teaspoon salt 
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon 
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves 
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg 
• 1 tablespoon water

The spice assortment for a double batch.  Clockwise, from center: sugar, sea salt, Saigon cinnamon,  freshly ground nutmeg, freshly ground cloves.  Don't even bother with old spices, if you're going the distance use high quality for this.

Is that... yes!  It's a half gallon of pecans.

Place egg whites in a large bowl.  Add water and beat lightly.  Add nuts and stir until moistened.  Mix sugar, salt and spices in a small bowl.  By the way, don't assume you can just pour everything piecemeal over the nuts, or you will get bits that taste intensely like cloves, and other bits that taste like pecans and sugar.  Mix up those spices first.

Lay everything out on 1-2 baking sheets, preferably lined with something.  I used parchment paper.

Pour the spices over the nuts and mix well.  Put the nuts on a well-greased cookie sheet.  Stir 2 or 3 times while cooking.  Bake for one hour at 250 degrees.  Try to pull them out before they turn too dark, or else they will be over-roasted and taste more like coffee than anything else.

The finished products, vastly improved from last year's overcooking

Allow these to cool, then break up gently.

Allow nuts to cool on sheet, stirring lightly to dislodge cooled sugars from parchment, foil, or pan.  Break apart large clusters of nuts gently, or don't if you're concerned that you will break up the nut halves.  Store in a tin, or a bag - if they last that long.

Candied pecans, bagged and ready to go for the holidays