Candy making is not something I typically try my hand at. All that talk about thermometers and stages and testing methods.  Those recipes always look like the kind of thing I don’t have the patience for.  Plus, once you’ve been badly burned by hot sugar, it makes you candy-shy. But this is an exception.  I [...]

  I love a flavorful toasted nut, but I have always found it difficult to get enough flavor into nuts without burning them, or the seasonings just fall right off.  My solution has become to soak the nuts in a flavorful liquid then toast them until perfect.  My Lemon Garlic Cashews were my first foray [...]

Tough Nut to Crack Pecans, it seems to me, are thought of as a particularly Southern nut.  I cannot tell you anything about its growing condition or to what region or country the pecan is indigenous, but the trees proliferate around here.  And the nuts feature prominently in Southern cooking from classic pie to divinity [...]