A Love Affair With Southern Cooking_ Recipes and Recollections - Jean Anderson [223]
1. Cut 20 four-inch squares of heavy-duty aluminum foil, place dull side up, butter each well, then arrange—not touching—on baking sheets. Set aside.
2. Mix the sugar, milk, and salt well in a large, deep, very heavy pan, then drop in the butter. Insert a candy thermometer, set over moderately low heat, and bring to a boil without stirring.
3. Reduce the heat slightly and continue cooking without stirring until the candy reaches the soft ball stage—238° F. on a candy thermometer. This may take as long as an hour. If you try to rush things, your pralines will be gritty.
4. The instant the candy thermometer reaches 238° F., set the pan off the heat and stir in the pecans. Beat hard with a wooden spoon for 30 seconds, then pour the candy onto the buttered foil squares, making each praline about 3 inches across. You’ll have to work fast because the candy hardens quickly.
5. Let the pralines cool for an hour, then peel off the foil and arrange in a single layer on a large platter. Or layer between sheets of wax paper in an airtight canister and store in a cool, dry spot.
“Young lady, I carried you some Bigbee pecans. I thought you might not harvest their like around here.”
—EUDORA WELTY, THE OPTIMIST’S DAUGHTER
FRIDAY PEANUT BRITTLE
MAKES ABOUT 1¾ POUNDS
This recipe comes from Dr. William C. Friday, who for thirty years was president of the University of North Carolina and with whom my father worked for at least ten as first vice president. I never knew that Bill was a peanut brittle aficionado until a few years ago when I appeared on North Carolina People, his public television show (UNC-TV). We spent half an hour cooking recipes from my recently published American Century Cookbook, and afterward, Bill inquired if I’d like to see how he made peanut brittle. Of course! When I asked how he’d become famous for his peanut brittle, he said that the Chapel Hill News had done a Christmas story some ten years earlier on the edible gifts he and his wife make each year: Ida’s fruitcake and his brittle.
Like the fruitcake, the brittle is an old recipe from Ida’s family in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Bill and Ida are most specific about how their brittle should be made. “Only use a cast-iron frying pan,” they instruct (my 12-incher is perfect because it’s three inches deep and that’s important). The Fridays also insist that you use a large marble slab—at least 20 inches by 30—when pouring out the brittle. And that you butter it well. “I just smear the butter around with my hand,” Bill says. At the end of his neatly typed recipe, Bill included the name of his peanut supplier “because you’ve got to use the right kind of peanuts.” He lists the A & B Milling Company of Enfield, North Carolina (aka Aunt Ruby’s Peanuts; see Sources, backmatter), which sells the large, pale-skinned Virginias, and that’s what I ordered. Shelled, blanched peanuts arrived a day later; the Fridays prefer the unblanched because they make the brittle more flavorful. All I can say is that except for using blanched peanuts, I followed the Fridays’ recipe to the letter and within 15 minutes had poured out the best peanut brittle I’ve ever eaten. Unlike most, theirs is more peanut than brittle.
1½ cups sugar
½ cup light corn syrup
¼ cup hot water
2¾ cups shelled unblanched (or blanched) raw peanuts (see headnote)
1¼ teaspoons baking soda
1. Butter a large marble slab well and set aside (see headnote).
2. Combine the sugar, corn syrup, and hot water in a well-seasoned deep 12-inch cast-iron frying pan, stirring until absolutely smooth.
3. Set over high heat and as soon as the mixture boils, mix in the peanuts. Cook, stirring constantly over high heat, for 7 to 8 minutes or until the nuts are chocolaty brown and the syrup is the color of caramel. Note: The Fridays do not use a candy thermometer; indeed it’s virtually impossible to do so, but I did take the temperature of the hot brittle mixture after 8 minutes and it was 295° F.
4. Remove the frying pan from the heat, sprinkle the baking soda evenly over the hot brittle, and stir vigorously;