Chocolate Nut Clusters
I’m in a slump. This feels like a yearly occasion, a period of time when I get really bad at keeping up with the blog. That’s been the past two months. Maybe it’s the covid-induced cabin fever. Maybe it’s the double bouts of fever and tonsillitis I’ve had in the past weeks. (It was throat-scratching, bed-tossing hell.) Maybe it’s just life throwing me a curveball. Maybe it’s the procrastination and anxiety-riddled monkey getting the better of me after being silenced and suppressed for the first half of the year. I’m in a slump, there are no excuses, no denying it.
But with every slump, there’s a turning point. And maybe this is it. It feels like the parabolic plateau at the bottom of the purgatory pit of procrastination. And when you’re at the bottom, the only way is up. So this is me crawling out of my hermit hole, taking slow steps into writing more, cooking more, podcasting more, learning more about food again, and maybe even dining out, pandemic permitting. All in all, I’m doing things that make me happy.
So, to jumpstart this blog out of procrasti-hibernation, what better way to coax slumpy, pandemic-riddled me out of my sad slumber, than with chocolate, well-toasted pecans, and a smidge of flaky sea salt sprinkled on top. Sometimes, simple delights are the best cure for mental blights.
Chocolate Nut Clusters
Makes 15-20 clusters
Ingredients
300g pecans, or any other nuts, or even a mixture of different types of nuts
80g good quality chocolate
5g flaky sea salt
Directions
Toast the pecans in the oven at 160°C for 15 minutes. (If you’re using almond slivers, toast it for shorter, or if you’re using larger nuts like walnuts or brazil nuts, toast it for a little longer.) When the nuts are done and your kitchen is perfumed by nutty toastiness, remove the nuts from the oven and let it cool on the tray for 5-10 minutes, until just warm to touch.
While the nuts are toasting, place the chocolate in a bowl over a water bath or bain marie, and heat it up until the chocolate is completely melted. Alternatively, you can also melt the chocolate in a microwave in 30 second bursts.
Pour the warm pecans into the melted chocolate, and mix gently until all the nuts are coated with chocolate. Then, scoop up a small bunch of chocolate-covered nuts and group them up into a cluster, then place them onto a tray. (I use around 6-8 pecans per cluster.) I like holding a spoon in one hand just for the initial scoop, and then I’ll use my other hand to touch it up and finesse it into an aesthetically-pleasing mound on the tray. Repeat until all the nuts are portioned. Then, sprinkle a smidge of flaky sea salt on top of each cluster.
Place the tray with the clusters in the refrigerator to cool for at least 30 minutes, until the chocolate is completely set. Then, eat your worries away!
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