Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut

Here in the United States we tend to associate nuts with snacking, alone or in mixes, or with sweets, like in pecan pie or a macadamia nut chocolate-chip cookie. However, in Indian, Southeast Asian, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines, nuts add dimension to entrées as well as desserts.

In the Mediterranean, hazelnuts (also called filberts) are added to cakes and confectionery items, such as Italian nougat (torrone), or puréed to flavor savory sauces, such as the Spanish picada.

Walnuts, combined with cinnamon and honey, are a staple in many Middle Eastern pastries and sweets, such as baklava, and confections, such as Turkish delight (loukoum) and Tunisian date candies. Walnuts also infuse flavor into savory dishes, such as muhammara, a spicy dip made with red peppers and pomegranate, and fesenjan, a Persian stew of chicken, duck and lamb with pomegranate juice.

Almonds, either whole or paste (marzipan), flavor both sweet and savory dishes, such as French almond-anchovies, fennel-mint spread, Middle Eastern stuffed dates or puddings, Greek skordalia, Spanish salsa romesco and Italian macaroons, and are used as toppings over Moroccan stewed chicken. In northern India, almonds and cashews are popular in aromatic biryanis or kormas, creamy puddings and desserts, and sweets, such as kheer, halva and shrikhand, with rose essence and cardamom. Even beverages, such as Mexico's milky horchata and Indian thandai, use almonds to create sweet, creamy drinks.

Southeast Asians roast and grind peanuts into paste with other spices for satay sauce and a salad dressing called gado-gado. Peanuts also make crunchy toppings for noodle dishes. Pili nuts, with a 70% oil content and a flavor similar to almonds when roasted, are flavored with salt, sugar, chocolate or sesame seeds, or made into a savory dish with salt, pepper, and/or patis (fish sauce) in the Philippines. Kenari nuts, or Java almonds, from Malaysia and Indonesia, have a delicate flavor for use in baked goods and their oil serves as a cooking oil. Candlenuts, called buah keras in Malaysian or kemiri in Indonesian, are oily nuts (close in flavor to macadamia nuts) that are roasted and ground with shallots, garlic, chiles and shrimp paste, and then tumised and used as a base flavoring or thickener for sauces and curries. Ngapi nuts from Burma are cooked and pounded into flat cakes, which are dried, fried and sprinkled with salt as a side dish.

Brazil nuts, from South America, also called Para nuts or cream nuts, have a 65% oil content, a tender texture and nutty flavor. Sapucaya or paradise nuts, from Brazil and Guyana, are closely related to Brazil nuts in oil content, and are eaten as snacks or added to confectionery items and chocolate. Souari nuts are soft and white, with a hazelnut-almond-like flavor and are eaten raw, roasted or cooked, or are made into butter. And in West Africa, groundnuts and dika nuts season meats, fish and chicken stews.

Susheela Raghavan, president of Horizons Consulting LLC, a New Rochelle, NY-based food-consulting firm, develops   "new" ethnic and American products for U.S. and global markets. Contact her via e-mail at [email protected], or by visiting www.SusheelaConsulting.com.

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