Is it brittle yet?

This isn't so much of a personal challenge (can I make brittle?) as a quest (how many different brittles can I make?)

But that's like starting in the middle of the story and it may get the reader's interest, but will it hold it?

Back to the beginning:
Last fall or winter, like MONTHS ago, I'm at my sister-in-law's and we're looking at a calendar cookbook she's just bought. Most of it is holiday and therefore I've seen it and seen it, but then there was this recipe for pistachio brittle. Now, that was different. Neither of us had heard of such. I got a copy of the recipe, told her I'd make it, and we'd find out if it was as good and different as it sounded.

It called for raw pistachios. How hard could that be? As it turns out, it was 8 months hard.

I fell in love with raw pistachios when my surrogate grandfather (had a whole surrogate family since the real ones lived far away), anyway, when my surrogate grandfather presented us (late '50s? early '60s?) with a mesh bag of this exotic-to-us nut called pistachio. We had to break them in two and there were skins and you'd get your fingers red eating them. Then, when pistachios really caught on there was, in the early '70s, the Watergate Cake, a cake made with pistachio pudding. It was green. And a Watergate Salad. And a Watergate scandal, but that's history.

It had been a while since I'd done anything with pistachios, so I set out to buy some. Roasted and salted pistachios were everywhere. Raw... no. Even at my favorite grocery store which stocks nuts in canisters, there was a sign that the nut was not about and they were sorry for any inconvenience. And so it went. For months. I finally caught a manager in the aisle and he said the shipment had been contaminated but the new crop was on its way. And, sure enough, the next week it arrived. At about $14/pound.

(Now the question could be raised that I didn't look elsewhere. True. Nor search on line. True. But if there were so many nuts available to roast and salt, why weren't there any raw ones? In other words, this tale maybe could have been shorter.)

I grabbed a cup's worth of raw pistachios and hunted up the recipe. Found it called for 2 cups. Well, piddle. I'd just cut it in half.

And I'm glad I did since stirring up that much brittle would have been a momentous job. Pouring it out onto two cookie sheets might have been beyond me for safety's sake. Half the recipe was enough anyway to know it was delicious and then whatever is better than delicious.

So, if it was good with pistachios, how would it be with almonds? Pecans? Hmmm...

A friend mentioned she'd made a walnut brittle and she gave the recipe. Well, it was different. No water. It was good, but I liked the texture of the first better. This sent me to Shirley Corriher's book on cooking and the section on candy in particular. Of course, she has a recipe for almond macadamia brittle. Just the idea takes your breath away, doesn't it? It contains water.

So now I'm on a quest. I'm going to make brittle for the library's annual Pumpkin Patch Bazaar. But what kind? Why not all? To that end, I'll need to experiment more. I've bought a new candy thermometer. It's huge. No more squinting to see that magic 300 degree mark. Not that I need that. At 300 is where it turns brown. According to my spouse's grandmother's peanut brittle recipe (no water), you toss everything together, heat it till it's brown, then add baking soda and pour. Not a thermometer in sight.

While my sister-in-law thought the pistachio brittle was excellent, the brittle connoisseur at this house has declared both of my so-far efforts very, very good. When am I making more?

It's not the book, it's the accessories

My friend Emily gave me a cookbook for Christmas, BakeWise by Shirley Corriher. Ms. Corriher is a bio-chemist, the go-to scientist when a professional chef has something go wrong and needs to know why. Emily knew I, with a degree in chemistry and a what-if frame of mind, would enjoy this book and that she herself would also. Alas, it proved so popular she could only find one copy pre-Christmas, and I was the lucky recipient. In turn, when the shelves were restocked in January, I found her a copy, used a 40% off coupon, and made everyone happy.

But back to the book. It was a gift, but so far, it hasn't been free. First off, I was fascinated that one could make bread without the yeast being exposed to 120-degree liquid, that 68-degrees, given the right set of circumstances, was sufficient. Somehow, that just didn't seem right, and in order to run her experiment and see if I got the same result, I needed to buy a different yeast, the quick-rise kind. Four hours later, I had 4 extraordinary bagettes. Unreal. I'm not going to be turning the old kitchen into a French bakery any time soon, but should the occasion arise (so to speak), I'd consider making them again.

Then there were the biscuits and the need for White Lily Self-Rising Flour. White Lily is made from soft Southern wheat, as opposed to the hard Northern red variety found in bread flours. It took a trip to Dallas to obtain the White Lily--and the biscuits were incredible.

Now I was on a roll. I make a good pound cake, but here, at the front of the book, was the recipe for the ultimate one. But I needed potato starch, an ingredient tagged by the book as 'kosher'. Well, I was game to try and find it at the local store and sure enough, it was there with the other small mill offerings like semolina and oat flour. Now that I had the ingredients and the regular all-purpose flour, I was ready to see how this pound cake stood up against my favorite.

Stand up, isn't quite the word, as it collapsed in a heap. My husband, bless his heart, declared it of good flavor and has eaten it anyway. But not to be out-maneuvered, I have repeated this experiment today. So far, one side has collapsed to half its height. It's been a graceful collapse and I resisted slicing until it was fully cool. The taste is good, full of vanilla, but this just isn't going to be the ultimate pound cake for our family. Anyway, it took 6 bowls and 7 measuring cups to make it.

But besides adding extra ingredients to my kitchen shelves, I've bought a baking stone, two instant-read thermometers (didn't realize I needed digital until the first one was out of the package), two 9 x 2 inch non-stick cake pans which I probably should have owned anyway, CookWise, her first book from 1997, and regular White Lily flour because I was at the store... and why not.

Why not, indeed. That's the reason I've already picked out my next experiment, uh, project: Boston Cream Pie. From scratch. I wonder how many bowls and cups it'll take.