A Snack for the Road

A simple recipe I'm squeezing in during a busy week, for buttery, maple-glazed almonds and the option to spice up

I’ve been cooking more than usual lately, and as it is I cook quite a lot. Part of it is due to the timing with projects I’m involved in, but it’s also because Vincent and I are leaving town for a month to see family in Australia, so I’m trying to front-load as much of the cooking part of my work while I have access to my familiar kitchen environment, so that I can backload the writing part to do while I’m away.

This more-than-usual cooking reminds me of both how much fun and exciting recipe writing is, and how much non-cooking work is involved in it. You probably know what I’m talking about: the taking kitchen inventory before I make my shopping list; the shopping, schlepping, unpacking, and attending to all the produce so that it’s stored for peak longevity; the constant reorganizing of the fridge; my mania related to creating a clean work space before I begin. After the “recipe development,” there’s the washing and cleaning and putting away, the packing up anything that hasn’t been eaten (reorganize the fridge again), and mentally logging the leftovers either for a future meal or seeing if I can give it to someone else so that they don’t go to waste. Sometimes I feel like 50% of my time has been spent cleaning food storage containers.

It’s been reminding me of my occasional food styling work, how the perception is being crouched over a plate fiddling herbs with tweezers, but the reality of it is spreadsheets. And checklists, lots of unpacking, organizing, and re-organizing groceries, and in general, desperately trying to keep a potentially huge mess under control. Success in such work essentially comes down to your ability to project manage and stay organized.

It’s my job and I love it, and it’s important for me to honor all of it as work, as a skill to hone. I imagine this doesn’t sound that different to feeding a big family and a bunch of kids day in day out. But it occasionally wipes me out. Which is just to say that this week, I’ve been drawn to food that can be eaten without a plate or utensil.

Last year I worked on a project where I learned to make these irresistible, spicy glazed cashews, spiked with a bit of harissa and candied in a relatively small amount of maple syrup. I’ve been revisiting that recipe, playing around with the formula a bit to adjust it for my own tastes, and ultimately landing here: a snack which I’ll be packing with me over the next few days of travel. It could just as well be an excellent accent item to a more complex dish, chopped up up over a salad or a tray of roasted squash.

These maple-glazed almonds are pleasantly buttery and just sweet enough. Working through the dregs of some nuts and seeds that’d been accumulating in my cupboard, I also made them using a medley of pecans, cashews, almonds, and pumpkin seeds — you can do the same and will love them. Clusters will form, in a good way.

And as for their flavor profile, stop at butter, maple, salt, and pepper if you wish. Or for a more complex flavor profile add heat in the form of a bit of harissa, chili paste, or even a couple squirts of sriracha or pinches of chili flakes, and/or some woodsy flavor in the form of rosemary, both of which I’ve done in the photos you see.

I don’t have a video today but will upload one in the near future — but know that there’s not much to see here. Just a bowl and a sheet pan and some time in the oven.

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Buttery Maple Almonds