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Picetostes
1/2 TEASPOON SALT I CUP FINELY CHOPPED BRAZIL NUTS MAPLE SUGAR OR HONEY Decrust bread slices and cut into fingers 1-inch thick, without cutting your own. Make batter by whipping together egg, milk, sugar and salt. Dip bread fingers in batter, then roll in Brazil nuts and bake 12 or more minutes in a beastly hot oven, or fry golden, either in pan or deep fat. Drizzle honey over the finished product, or maybe maple syrup, although that wouldn't be at all Brazilian.
HICKORY CORN An unusually good dish is hickory corn, as easy to make as popovers and much more tasty. Simply douse a can of corn with a cup of milk, beat 2 eggs to a froth and stir them in with a tablespoon of flour, a teaspoon of salt, and then the chief thing, a cup of chopped hickory nuts-or butternuts, if you want something richer. All you have to do is bake the mixture in a buttered dish until it's firm as cheesecake. You might use a can of succotash in place of the corn and go Indian by substituting pine nuts.
Two nut dishes for camp or cabin cooking: a Brazil-nut-crusted French toast and a baked corn custard bound with hickory nuts. Both are forgiving, but the oven language needs translating.
- "Beastly hot oven"The book gives no figure; read it as somewhere around 425-450F. At that heat the nut coating should colour in roughly the 12 minutes the recipe allows; at appreciably lower heat the bread is likelier to dry out before the crust browns.
- The nuts will burn before the bread doesBrazil nuts are high in oil and scorch fast. If you are baking rather than frying, set the fingers on a buttered sheet and turn them once at the halfway mark, and pull them the moment the coating smells toasted.
- Batter quantitiesThe list as printed begins partway through, so the amounts of bread, egg, milk and sugar are not recoverable. For a cup of chopped nuts, one egg to a half cup of milk with a spoonful of sugar will coat about six thick fingers.
- Cut the fingers thickOne inch is deliberate. Thinner strips soak through and collapse when you roll them in the chopped nuts. Slightly stale bread holds together far better than fresh.
- Frying temperatureFor deep fat, 350-360F. Hotter and the nut crust darkens before the centre warms through; cooler and the fingers absorb oil.
- Hickory corn is a baked custardBake it at 350F, not at the high heat used for the toast, until the centre is just set and barely wobbles -- 35 to 45 minutes in a shallow buttered dish. A hot oven curdles the egg and weeps liquid.
- Canned cornDrain the can before adding the cup of milk, or the custard may not firm up.
- Nut substitutionsHickory nuts and butternuts are foraged rather than shop-bought in most places now. Pecans stand in for hickory and walnuts for butternut with no change in method; pine nuts, as suggested, are milder and should be lightly toasted first.
- YieldAn estimate only, since the bread and batter quantities are missing from the printed list: the corn dish will serve about four as a side, and the nut toast two to three.