10 minutes to spicy nuts

I spent a few minutes in the kitchen last night making some devilled almonds (p192). You have to have some kind of nuts at Christmastime, and devilled almonds are the only nut recipe in the Edmonds book. Fortunately, they turned out to be very tasty, as well as dead easy to make.

You just heat a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan, add the almonds and stir them for a few minutes until they turn golden. It seems like a lot of oil for the amount of nuts, but you drain them on paper towels, which absorbs most of the excess.

While the nuts are draining, mix 1/8 teaspoon of chilli powder with 1 teaspoon of salt in a bowl. Add the nuts and stir through: done. Easy, right?

I wasn't sure what the flavour would be like - I suspected either bland (if there wasn't enough chilli) or too spicy (if there was too much). Actually, it turned out to be neither. They tasted a lot like shop-bought roasted salted nuts, but with a mildly spicy aftertaste from the chilli. Tasty and dangerously moreish.

* * *

I lost count of the number of times I accidentally typoed 'nits' instead of 'nuts' in the above paragraphs. 'Spicy nits' doesn't sound quite so appealing as a snack...