Pistachio and Almond Butter

This butter has a nice mild pistachio flavour to it. You could opt for 100% pistachios if you want a more intense flavour. You could also split the batch in half and make one half sweet (with any sort of sweetener, like pure honey), and the other half savoury (season with a bit of salt to get the flavours to brighten). You can also play around with the consistency of it. Less water and you are going to end up with a paste, more water and you can thin it way out.

1 cup pistachios, shelled, blanched and skinned
1 cup almonds, blanched and skinned
¾ cup sugar
½ cup hot water
2 pinches sea salt

To blanch the almonds and pistachios just drop them in a pot of boiling water for a minute or so. I use a slotted spoon to remove a couple of test nuts. Test one of the almond, the skins should puff out a bit and slide of easily with a good pinch. The pistachios are a little trickier because of their funky shapes and you might need to coax the skins off using a variety of any of the following: pinching, picking, or rubbing.

The next step is to make a nut purée. I gave my hand blender a good workout, but it worked quite well for this purpose and I ended up with a nice smooth nut butter in the end.

Place the nuts, and about ½ cup hot water in a medium bowl. Get in there are purée it. You may need to add more water to thin things out - just ad a bit at a time, you're in trouble if you add too much. I like mine a consistency that is easily spreadable, I don't like nut butters that are so thick they tear the bread you are spreading them on.

Sweeten it up. I ended up stirring in about ¾ of a cup of sugar to sweeten my pistachio butter. You might like a little more or a little less or you may want to use honey or other sweeteners.

Start with ¼ cup and ad in ¼ cup increments from there. Stir in a pinch or two of salt to pull everything together.

Makes about 2 cups.