In this first installment of a series of blog posts called A Year of Tiny Improvements, I am replacing shop-bought crisps with a healthier, local alternative which we can grow and produce on our own land (or friends’) and make at home with just three ingredients.
To be honest we don’t eat a lot of crisps here, but sometimes (usually in the summer when our bodies crave more salt with all the extra sweating we’re doing!) we end up with a strong craving for them… and then the floodgates are opened. We buy one packet, and the next day we want more, and so on and so on.
And then we’re getting through a big bag of crisps on an almost daily basis. Which is not a problem, but if what we actually need is the salt, surely there’s a healthier, cheaper and more local alternative.
I would love the answer to this craving to be: salted almonds!
Almonds are one of the main cash crops grown in this area. We are lucky that many of our good friends grow more almonds than they can use themselves (and grow them organically, too) and are very happy to sell the excess cheaply directly to us, rather than via the co-op.
So we have, basically, as many almonds as we want. This year we bought about 50kg of unshelled almonds from our friend, which will turn out to be about 20kg shelled. That’s quite a lot, so expect lots of almond usage in this upcoming series of posts!
I don’t want this blog to turn into a recipe blog, because really I’m no expert in anything like that, but if you want to know the basic gist of making delicious, crunchy, toasty salted almonds, here’s the deal:
- Shell the almonds (if they have the hard shell still on them)
- Remove the inner papery brown shell by blanching them in hot water for a few minutes. After that, the papery shell just pops right off
- Fry the almonds in a few centimeters of olive oil. The oil should be covering all the almonds. As soon as they start to turn very slightly brown and smell a little toasty, take them out, let them dry on kitchen paper, and toss them in as much salt as you want. I learned it’s better to toss in salt while they’re still warm and wet with oil, that way the salt sticks better!