Hard Christmas Crack: Vegan Peanut Brittle

A couple weeks ago, the UCSB music department hosted a holiday party. I ended up getting kind of drunk on wine – not embarrassingly drunk, just kind of drunk – because there was nothing for me to eat except chips and salsa. It struck me that in general, holiday parties are not the best place to be a vegan.

So when my friend Linda (the plucky Mendelssohn scholar with whom I drove up to San Francisco last month) told me about her husband’s vegan Christmas candy recipe, I got excited and demanded she share it with me.

A few days later, I got an email from her equally plucky and slightly sillier husband, Chris. He described the peanut brittle recipe, which has been in his family for generations, with helpful commentary. I think he reads this blog, so he knew that if he didn’t go into great detail, the chances that I would screw up his family’s peanut brittle recipe were about as high as my cholesterol heart rate would be after I inevitably ate the whole tray of it.

I decided to attempt to make the peanut brittle the night before my parents’ annual Christmas caroling party. I couldn’t help but imagine Chris’s great-great-grandmother cooking up a batch of this very same peanut brittle hundreds of years ago over an open fire in one of those old-school cauldrons. In my mind, she looked like a jolly combination of Chris and Linda (although obviously that doesn’t make any sense) and wore a frilly yet practical apron. In this imaginary past, she was a vegan and substituted Earth Balance for the butter the recipe called for.

Vegan Peanut Brittle

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup white Karo (corn syrup)
6 tbsp Earth Balance
2 1/2 cups red Spanish peanuts, skin-on
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla extract

I could not find any red Spanish peanuts at Whole Foods, so I just went with the bulk regular peanuts. Obviously, I had some strong reservations about using corn syrup. I justified it by reasoning that Christmas candy is supposed to be terrible for you, and who am I to get in the way of Christmas? There is a war on Christmas going on, people, and I know what side I’m on. The side of high-fructose corn syrup.

Chris’s instructions indicated that I ought to grease a sheet of foil (or a marble slab, but who has a marble slab?!) beforehand, because I wouldn’t have time to do it while cooking. That made me anxious.

So did the rest of his instructions, actually. He used a lot of italics to emphasize words like “immediately” and “fast,” and just reading through the recipe made me fairly certain I was bound to mess something up.

So I enlisted the help of my little brother, Brian. I figured that way, if the peanut brittle came out terribly, I could blame it on him.

Brian, not messing anything up.

First, we melted the sugar, water, corn syrup, and Earth Balance over medium-high heat in a big pot. When it started to boil, we dumped in the peanuts and stirred the mixture with a wooden spoon. At this point, we inserted the candy thermometer to keep track of the temperature; when it got to 300 degrees, we were supposed to take it off the heat immediately.

That is, apparently, the "hard crack" temperature, at which the candy becomes perfectly brittle. Obviously, I wanted my peanut brittle to be the equivalent of hard crack. Hard Christmas crack. That stuff's addictive.

Chris’s instructions said we would be “stirring constantly” for twenty minutes or so, so I let Brian take care of that (his arms are significantly more built than mine are, since he works out like a maniac), while I helpfully held the candy thermometer in place. I had to hold it so that it wouldn’t touch the bottom of the pot, or its reading would be skewed.

We were stirring so quickly that the wooden spoon became a blur.

Surprisingly, we weren’t stirring for twenty minutes at all – after only about seven minutes, the thermometer read 300 degrees. I think it’s because we were using an electric stove instead of a cauldron over an open fire, like Chris’s great-great-grandmother. Whatever the reason, we took it off the heat and followed Chris’s next three directions, which read:

- Once you kill the heat, immediately stir in the baking soda. This will make the mixture foam up. Don’t freak. Keep stirring.

- Then, immediately stir in the vanilla. This will make everything smell like toasted marshmallows (and peanuts). Keep stirring all the way to the greased foil/marble slab.

- Dump it, fast fast fast. As close to “all at once” as you can. Luckily, there’s enough oil in the candy that you shouldn’t have too much sticking to the sides of the pot.

Oh, the anxiety! All those italics. As Brian kept stirring like the gym rat he is, I added the baking soda. When it foamed up, I was tempted to freak, but I remembered that Chris’s instructions had explicitly said not to freak. So I remained calm and added the vanilla.

When it was time to dump it (fast, fast, fast!), we recruited my mom as an extra spreader. I poured the molten candy onto the pre-greased foil while she and Brian frantically spread it around with wooden spoons until it just wouldn’t spread any more:

We let it sit for two hours. While we waited, we played Parcheesi and stared at the cooling tray longingly. Finally, it was cool enough to eat:

Here I hold, in my hot little hipster hands, a delicious heart attack.

It was delicious! Perfectly brittle and the right combination of sweet and nutty. And it was a huge hit at the Christmas caroling party. Thanks, Linda and Chris (and Chris’s great-great-grandmother)!

Man-made Risotto

I grew up watching my Italian grandmother and great-aunts slave away for hours in the kitchen while their husbands sat out in the living room and watched TV. Then after dinner, the women would clean up and wash all the dishes while their husbands went back to the living room and slept.

So when my friend Matteo – an Italian man – offered to cook me dinner, I was thrilled at the chance to vindicate my female relatives. I told him that my plan was to sit out in the living room and watch TV (well, watch Hulu on my computer) while he worked hard in the hot kitchen.

He became annoyed and told me that real Italians don’t live like that anymore; it’s just the old-school Italian-American families, like my mom’s, that keep the stereotype alive. I asked him if he would at least yell, “Mangia! Mangia!” at me when he was done. He rolled his eyes and didn’t justify my request with an answer.

I ended up not relaxing in the living room while he cooked. Instead, I hovered around him drinking wine, asking questions, taking pictures of what he was doing, and generally getting in the way. Here’s what he made for me:

Risotto ai Porri, Vegan-Style
(Risotto with Leeks, Vegan-Style)
Makes 6-8 servings

4 leeks
2 cups Village Harvest Organic Arborio (risotto)
4 tbsp Earth Balance
Vegetable broth (a lot)
A handful of Daiya mozzarella shreds

Silly Matteo had assumed that I would own some vegetable broth. Since I don’t own any useful ingredients, including vegetable broth, Matteo had to make the broth from scratch.

He boiled a whole pot of water and threw in the ends of the leeks, a zucchini (or as Matteo obviously called it, a single “zucchino”), an onion cut in half, and a handful of kale. We let it simmer for 20 minutes:

While the broth was broth-ifying, Matteo chopped the leeks into very thin slices. He put the Earth Balance into the middle of a big wok and poured the risotto and leeks on top of it in a pile:

Then he spooned a few ladles of broth on top and stirred it up with a wooden spoon over low-medium heat. The trick, I guess, is to never stop stirring. As soon as the risotto starts to get sticky and clumpy, you add another few ladles of the broth. After about a half hour, the risotto had expanded to its fullest potential.

We sprinkled some Daiya mozzarella shreds on top and ate it with what was left of the white wine. It was perfect. And the best part is that the leftovers tasted even better the next day, since the flavors had had some time to mingle with each other in the fridge.

This man-made risotto definitely beat any woman-made risotto I could have cooked up. But I’m glad I watched closely and took detailed notes because it tasted just as good as any buttery, cheesy version. And I doubt you could get vegan risotto it in Italy, so... Italian-Americans win.