Italian Nut & Nougat Confection

There is nothing wrong in eating a candy once in a while especially when it is this delicious and beautiful not to mention, based on a recipe that pre dates the roman empire. But above and beyond the great taste, great looks and historical significance this recipe is also great for those of you who really love stirring since we are going to do a lot of that about 1 hour and half but in the end it is totally going to be worth it. plus time flyes when you are having fun, now lets go ahead and get started by making few things ready.

400 g honey (about 1 1/3 cups)
250 g white sugar (about 1 cup plus 3 tablespoons)
2 large egg whites (room temp)
pinch salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 rounded tablespoon lemon zest
3 cups roasted almonds (I used Marcona almonds)
1 cup roasted pistachio
2 sheets “wafer” paper (*edible rice paper)

Another thing that we definitely need is to prep our pans so go ahead and line them up with plastic wrap and then wafer paper, they can be sometimes sold as a rice paper.

Now when we have every thing ready, go ahead and add the honey in a heavy base pot. i am using a light amber honey that is my recommendation but i am pretty sure any honey will work, to that add some sugar before garbing a heavy duty spatula and head into the strove. place it on a low heat and start stirring and continue to stir and stir and stir, cooking over low heat for thirty minutes and during this time our mixture will turn from something golden and grainy to smooth and light golden.

Now put the egg whites in a whisking bowl and add a pinch of salt and whip it to soft peeks. do not over whip. something that looks like this.

Now what we do while heat is still on low we will whisk these egg whites into our honey mixture, one whisk full at a time until it mixes completely before we adding the next whisk. keep on adding until all of egg whites are incorporated.

Now we will grab our spatula and continue to stir the whole mixture on the low heat for about 40 min. As this mixture cooks a couple of things will happen, it will turn in to brighter and brighter white and you will notice if you rise the spatula, mixture will make ribbons that will kind of stay on top for couple of seconds. this is how i generally find out if it is done. but there is another great test where we will drop little bit of this mixture in cold water and as soon as it cools you can feel how firm is your mixture is going to be once it will be done.

Once we determine that it has cooked enough we will stop and add the wrest of the ingredients. go ahead and add vanilla extract, lemon zest and nuts. one pro tip here which is, warm up your nuts before you add them God forbid if you add them at room temp or cold, it will make the whole mixture freeze and very difficult to work with.

As soon as the mixture is incorporated we will transfer it to our preparation dish, spread it down evenly, the best we can and top it with other piece of wafer paper a press it gently with the meat ponder.

Once the mixture is properly pressed we will let it cool down for an hour or so, at which point it will be nice and firm and ready to cut. I let mine sit for couple of hours then took it off the pan. took a long serrated knife, using nice long solid motion, sliced through revealing what has to be the most gorgeous side in the whole food kingdom.

So i really hope , you give this a try soon. thanks for reading please comment and upvote....