Rosemary Honey Spiced Almonds and Parmesan Crackers - A Busted Picnic

Possibly the longest blog post in our history: Rosemary Honey Spiced Almonds and Parmesan Crackers - A Busted Picnic. The weather in the Pacific Northwest is a fickle and manipulative beast sometimes. Just when you think you're IN THERE and it's going to be a great weekend, it pours. Just when you think you're going to start growing moss in your hair, the rain stops and it's gorgeous. Lesson #1 for living in or visiting the Pacific Northwest - HAVE A PLAN B. 

SO, as you may have gathered from the title, we were going to have a picnic, and from paragraph one, you may have also gathered, the weather mixed things up. Luckily in our almost 9 years up here, we've learned. Living room picnic it was.
 

For our picnic, I'd made Rosemary Honey Spiced Almonds and Parmesan Crackers (I also made No Knead Bread and Mango Chili Chicken Salad, and those are already posted.)

Rosemary Honey Spiced Almonds - from Recipes Interrupted
Preheat oven to 325
Makes 1 cup

1 cup unsalted almonds
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon honey
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh minced rosemary
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

 

Mix honey, oil, rosemary and salt in a medium bowl. Whisk until the honey and oil are well mixed. Stir in the almonds and toss until the nuts are all very well coated.

  

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and pour nuts and all of the honey mixture onto the paper. Spread out nuts so they have lots of space. Bake at 325 until nuts are well toasted and the honey mixture has set, about 15-20 minutes (I pulled these out at 17 minutes.) Turn the pan once in the middle of baking for even cooking. 

Let the nuts cool completely on the pan and then break up any clusters. DELICIOUS. Maybe my new faves, even over these Spiced Nuts. Oh man, I don't know... very different flavors... I will make both again and again!

Parmesan Crackers - from Ina Garten

Preheat oven to 350

Makes about 2 dozen crackers

 

1 stick of butter, softened

1 cup shredded Parmesan 

1 1/4 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 heaping teaspoon dried thyme or 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

 

In a stand mixer, or with awesome arm muscles, cream butter until light and fluffy. Add in the cheese, flour and spices and blend until all ingredients are combined. Dough will be very crumbly.

 

Dump dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead a few times until the dough starts to stick together. In a sheet of plastic wrap start to form a log about 12-14 inches long, like making a sushi roll. 

Once the log is formed, place in the freezer for about 30 minutes. Remove when the log is firm and slice into 1/4 inch slices and place on a parchment lined baking sheet. These crackers keep their shape well, so you can place them pretty close together. 

 

Bake for about 20-22 minutes or until crackers are very lightly browned. Let them cool on the pan for a few minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. 

While our outdoor picnic was a bust, the indoor picnic was almost as good... but par for the course, as soon as we had cancelled our plans and set out the food on the coffee table, out came the sun. We shook our heads and grabbed some wine. Sometimes its all you can do.

A few things about these recipes... 

I love making crackers. For some reason it makes me really feel like I'm cooking. These are great too!

I think these crackers would be GREAT with sage in place of the thyme. 

These nuts were insanely easy. Great for an impromptu visit.

Made this time last year...

Lasagna Rolls

Ham and Cheese Pinwheels

Zucchini Fritters

Potato Galette

This is a simple and gorgeous dish. It does take a bit of time, and it takes a few special pieces of equipment, but it's worth the investment in both. The recipe calls for a non-stick, oven save skillet and while you might not need a mandolin, I really can't imagine doing this without one. I've made this recipe a few times and followed the directions from the original to the letter - a rare thing for me to do. We've had this as a side dish for stepped up dinners, but with a nice salad it would be a great main dish.

Potato Galette - from Cooks Illustrated
Preheat the oven to 450 degrees

2 1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, scrubbed and sliced 1/8 inch thick 
4 tablespoons of melted butter
1 tablespoon butter, for melting in the skillet
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary

Slice potatoes and place in a bowl of cold water. Rinse off starch, change water and rinse again. Thoroughly dry the sliced potatoes by arranging them on dish cloths and blotting off the water with fresh towels. 

Whisk 4 tablespoons of melted butter with the cornstarch, salt, pepper and rosemary in a very large bowl. Toss in dry potato slices and stir to coat with butter mixture.

Place the skillet over medium heat and melt the last tablespoon of butter. Remove from heat to layer the potatoes. Arrange the first layer of potatoes in an overlapping pattern. This is what you'll see when you flip out the galette, so I tried to get a nice pattern going for that first layer. After the first layer, I really wasn't very careful. I just tried to get even layers.

Once you've layered in all of the potatoes, cook about 5 minutes, or until the potatoes around the edges of the skillet start to turn translucent; about 5 minutes. Spray a sheet of tin foil with cooking spray and press onto the potatoes. Use a 9 inch pie dish weighted with pie weights and press down onto the potatoes (rice or dry beans also works if you are sans pie weights. Obvi, I'm sans pie weights.) Put the skillet in the oven and bake 20 minutes.

Uncover the potatoes and bake another 20-25 minutes or until potatoes feel tender when pierced with paring knife. Place a wooden cutting board big enough to cover the skillet completely and with oven mitts on, flip the gallet out. Cooks Illustrated says you can cook the galette a few minutes longer on the stove top shaking a little to loosen the potatoes, but I didn't need to do this. 

Here I was photo bombed by our toddler.

A few things about this recipe...

Cooks Illustrated calls the rosemary optional, but I really like the addition. I would try thyme in place of rosemary.

The simplicity of this is amazing, but we are onion lovers and I'll try mandolin-sliced onions layered into this also. Maybe with some nutmeg and gruyere... oh boy. That sounds good.  

Drying the potatoes really well is REALLY important. This dish can have a too-wet texture if the potatoes are wet when they go in the oven.

Finding myself out of tin foil, I have used parchment paper sprayed with cooking spray in place of the foil... it worked just fine.

Enjoy!