5:04 p.m. - 2003-01-10
Praline Recipe
Every once in a great while, because of my epilepsy, I will get what is the equivalent of a hallucination, except that instead of seeing things that aren't there, I will feel things that aren't there. Usually it will feel like I have a jigohumongous cockroach running up and down my back. This is extremely disconcerting since we actually have jigohumongous cockroaches here in the South and so I can't ignore it. I actually have to scream like the white lady I am and whip off my shirt and wack at myself until I realise that, heh, heh, it's just one of those goofy pranks that the Universe likes to play on me.
Anyway, today I'm having these pseudo-hallucinations but instead of the jigohumongous cockroaches, it's the tiniest of little tiny ants that keep marching across....my little finger. It's very distracting and is keeping me from typing up anything intelligent.
So I'm going to give you my recipe for pralines.
This isn't a recipe for a fabulous candy, though that is the end product. Nope, it's a recipe for a fabulous bit of performance art, preferably to be performed when you are being egged on by a large group of close friends and a large bottle of Glenfiddich. By the way, this recipe comes from a real swanky restaurant in New Orleans, the kind I never eat at. Warning: If you do this right, the resulting candy will make you drool like Pavlov's puppy. God, it's just fabulous. Mmmmm. Gooooob. Drool.
You will need:
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar. It MUST be light brown. If you use dark brown it'll turn into this wierd toffee-like stuff that will rip out your fillings.
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 stick butter
1/2 cup pecans, sorta' crushed but not into powder, just into small pieces.
BEFORE you do anything else, get a very large piece of waxed paper and smear a thin layer of butter over it. You'll be pouring the candy out onto this and you don't want to wait until the last minute to get it ready. If you do, your candy will be cooking down to a hard and lumpy mess and then catching fire while you frantically try to butter your wax paper. Not that that happened to me or anything. I only set things on fire because I forget they are cooking, not because my wax paper is unprepared. Really.
Next, combine all ingredients in a medium sized saucepan. Cook over a medium heat, stirring constantly until the butter melts and it starts to boil.
This is where the performance art starts. How to keep yourself amused while the stuff boils itself to Hell and back several times over. Not to mention that you have to stir, Stir, STIR yourself silly while it's boiling away!! The recipe states that you have to let it get to "soft-ball" stage, which means that when you put a drop of the mixture into a glass of cold water it should form a ball, but in my experience that is waaaaaaaayyy too soon. You have to really let it thicken up, thick, thick, thick and KEEP STIRRING!! Pretend you are Satan boiling up a child molester!! Or the three witches from MacBeth!! Make your friends tell you how lovely you are as your forehead dews up with persperation!! Boil! Stir!! BOIL! STIR!!
Eventually it will get really thick and cloudy and the pecans will stay suspended in the mixture. If I were writing a cookbook I would tell you to look at a cooking thermometer for a certain temperature, but personally I think cooking thermometers are for pussy wimps! The best way to tell if it's done is to spoon some out onto the waxed paper and see if it hardens up when it cools. If it does, you're gold, and you should spoon it out by large tablespoons onto the waxed paper and let it harden and cool. If it doesn't, keep boiling! Keep stirring!! BOIL! STIR! GLENFIDDICH!
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