A component in a dessert at poppy, I have been keeping my pantry well stocked with buttered pecans. It’s harder than one would think, what with the dessert they accompany being ridiculously popular. The dessert is a play on sticky toffee pudding. Cubes of warmed date cake are drenched in hot butterscotch sauce, covered with pieces of medjool dates and the buttered pecans in question. This warm concoction is crowned with a scoop of banana ice cream.
I can say with confidence, this is the first time, on any menu I have ever created, that a non chocolate dessert is the top seller.
So with the popularity of this dessert, playfully dubbed “hot date cake”, I am churning these buttered pecans out like there is no tomorow. I realized today, after leaving the salty buttery nuts on the cooling rack too long, that it’s not just the high sales that are diminishing my stores.
Every cook that passed by nicked a few, popping them in their mouths before I noticed. When I realized that 1/3 of the tray of pecans had gone missing, I confronted the scavengers.
It seems that I have created a few buttered pecan addicts. I couldn’t blame them, I am one of them.
They get their flavor from being roasted in a coating of melted butter and salt. As the pecans toast, the milk solids in the butter caramelize, giving these pecans a remarkable depth of richness. As the pecans cool, the butter oil is absorbed by the pecan, leaving the salt clinging to the nut. They are tender and crisp, melt in your mouth, salty, buttery, mapley, and completely addictive.
I highly recomend everyone treats pecans in this manner. While you can do healthy things with them, like put them in oatmeal or scatter over a wintery squash soup, I would highly recomend making a sundae. Maybe with caramel sauce, over chocoalte ice cream, like those tasty little turtle candies.
Just don’t eat them all first.
Buttered pecans
150g pecans (about 1 cup)
25g butter (about 2 tbsp)
5g kosher salt (about 1 tsp)
1. Melt the butter, and toss with the pecans and salt.
2. Toast in a 350 degree oven for 5 to 10 minutes, until the nuts deepen in color, become fragrant, and you can see that the butter has started to caramelize.
3. Let them cool and sit for 2 hours before eating, so the butter soaks in.