"In a couple generations you'll have a nearly 100% male population of carp fanaticly trying to bust their nuts on anything they can get their hands on."
- jasona
"Nuts polluting otherwise decent cakes and pastries? Work of the devil."
- Harlock
At a time when the eggheads are saying the recession is over, too many of my friends are still looking for work, and employers are wreaking their revenge for years of job hopping and signing bonuses, it's good to see that Cant can still make me laugh.
Continuing this week's nut-themed silliness:
Brazil nuts-I have a love/hate relationship with these bad puppies. They're cool because they're huge and they grow like segments of an orange (or fit together like pieces of a Cadbury chocolate orange) in huge pods that will brain you if you happen to be standing under a 150-ft. tall Brazil nut tree in the Amazon rainforest during a storm. They're a pain because it takes so much more than a whack to open these bastards. Brazil nuts have the hardest, toughest, most-difficult-to-get-any-leverage-on shell of any nut. When you finally manage to hammer your way through the armor, you usually end up with a collection of nut pieces tenaciously clinging to shell shards. In the end, the reward isn't all that great as the nut is very oily and sort of bland. Also, this is another nut that is likely to ambush you with a blast of rancid bitterness more often than should be allowed. So brazils are not my favorite nut, but their sheer size seduces with a promise of nut delight that keeps me coming back. (Everything you never wanted to know about Brazil nuts)
Pine nuts-Yes, I know that these are not nuts. In fact, about the only nut that is a true, orthodox nut (with curled peyot dangling proudly) is the hazelnut. Everything else is either a seed or a legume. I have long loathed pine nuts. I hate how they are expensive and thus considered chic. Anything rare or difficult to harvest automatically commands a high price even if it tastes like shit. I'm sure you could get idiots with more money than sense to pay $300 a pound for coffee crapped out of a Sumatran civet. In fact, it's being done right now. Italians put pine nuts in their pesto, which adds a healthy dose of Euro-snob appeal. What I particularly detest about pine nuts is their taste. Whenever I've eaten them, I feel that I may as well be chewing on a 2X4. Instead of paying a packet to dine in the toniest Palo Alto restaurants with pine nuts sprinkled over everything, I could just chow down at Home Depot. I must confess that I did eat a pine nut I liked recently. A friend had baked them into a spinach pie/quiche concoction. The strong pine flavor had diffused to a pleasant level and the dish had me going back for seconds, but in general you can keep your expensive lumber nuggets.
Cashews-These guys are very similar to pistachios in flavor and texture. Their medium-soft crunch turns into a pleasant nutty creaminess under your teeth. Chicken korma, one of my favorite dishes, owes much of its richness to cashew paste. Of course, this soft crunch means that cashews are more likely to get stuck in your teeth, but the taste is worth it to me. That they are edible at all is rather strange considering that cashews are related to poison ivy and poison oak. The skin surrounding the kernel and the odd apple-thing that the nut grows under can cause severe rashes. Since I doubt that the cashew harvesters in India wear full environment suits when they work with cashews, I have to assume that there are a few elite cashew pickers who are immune to the irritant. Is it me or do these fingers look slightly irritated?
Pakeha