Torrone (Italian Nut & Nougat Confection) – Great Valentine’s Day Treat!

Hi, I'm Chef John from foodwishes.com with tarone. That's right, there's nothing wrong with having a sweet

treat

every once in a while, especially when it's so delicious and beautiful, not to mention based on a recipe from before the Roman Empire, but beyond the

great

s. It looks

great

and has historical significance, this recipe is also perfect for those of you who really love to stir as we are going to do a lot of it for about an hour and a half but it will be worth it and time flies when you are having fun and for me and I hope for you this is fun so let's go ahead and start by making sure we have the following things ready before we start this recipe the most important of which would be our toasted nuts and luckily my oven is broken. so I had an excuse to buy some beautiful peeled and toasted Spanish almonds, as well as some toasted pistachio, which I definitely have too many of and then, in addition to the walnuts, we're also going to want to separate two eggs because in half an hour we're going to You'll need beaten egg whites and that's going to be a lot easier to do if they're at room temperature, and then on top of that, we're also going to grate in a little bit of lemon zest and that's it. you have to do it ahead of time as far as the ingredients, that's another thing we're definitely going to need to do before we start is prep our pan, so what I have here is a plastic baking dish plus a couple of pieces of what's called wafer paper which is optional but makes it much prettier so I have two pieces one that will go on the bottom and one that will be pressed on top and is usually made of rice and Sometimes, it's actually sold as rice paper, which can be a little confusing because it's definitely not the same as what spring rolls are made with, but we'll talk about that on the blog anyway for now, once we have all that together, we'll be able to start the recipe, so let's go ahead and add some honey to a heavy bottomed pot and I prefer something lighter.

I'm using what's called light amber honey, so that's my recommendation, but I'm pretty sure any honey will work and then we'll add some. of sugar before we grab a sturdy spatula and head over to the stove where we're going to place this over low heat and we're going to start stirring and we're going to continue stirring and stirring and stirring cooking over low heat for 30 minutes and during that time our mixture will go from being something golden and grainy to something pale but much smoother and while technically we're going to tell you to stir this continuously, I don't necessarily mean that you can literally stop stirring every once in a while and take a break for a few seconds, nothing tragic will happen, but we really want to keep it moving almost the entire time and after 30 minutes of simmering, your mixture should look like this and at this point we're going to stop and add. our egg whites, which by the way we need to beat until soft peaks first, so if you're doing this with a friend, you can stir while the other makes the eggs or if you're doing it alone, it's not a big deal because our egg whites They are at room temperature it will only take a couple of minutes to whisk and our honey mixture should be fine if you're scared I guess you can turn off the heat until you're done but like I said it shouldn't be a problem.

So what we're going to do is add a big pinch of salt to the room temperature egg whites and take a whisk and like I said, we want to whip those two soft peaks, let's not beat them too much, we want to get to what I like to call the shaving cream stage, so something that looks like this and then what we'll do with the heat still low is beat those egg whites into our honey mixture, one whisk full at a time, so add a little bit and we'll beat it until it's gone and then we'll continue with three or four more additions until all of those egg whites have been incorporated and as you'll notice this will really lighten the mixture and by the way, I should mention that the method we're using here is a very technique. slow and very old.

Well, the modern method for this is to make a very hot sugar syrup and then simply fold it into the finished meringue, but although it's much quicker, I prefer this method. As I hope you read on the blog, I just wanted to mention that in case you read comments like, "Hey, why aren't you using the method? It only takes 15 minutes. I have my reasons, so we'll continue with the whisk." until all the egg whites are incorporated, at which point we want to go back to our spatula or in my case, heatproof spoon and then all we have to do is continue cooking stirring constantly for another 40 minutes or until be ready and one thing is I want you to be on the lookout to help determine when that is.

You see how when I lift the spatula and that mixture forms ribbons that disappear on the surface almost immediately, we'll keep an eye on that because as this mixture cooks. A couple of things will happen, it will become brighter and brighter white and you will notice that those ribbons will go from disappearing almost immediately to this stage where they sit on the surface for a couple of seconds and then as you go. I see that near the end they will eventually stay on the surface for about four or five seconds, so usually that's how I can tell we're getting really close, but there's another great test where you just drip a little bit of the mixture onto a little bit of cold water. water and as soon as it cools, you can feel how firm your mixture will be when it's done and what I'm going to do is make something feel like a firm clay, so this was close, it was too soft. so I kept cooking stirring for about 40 minutes or so until my mixture looked like this okay look at the ribbons you see how they hold their shape and stay visible on that surface for four or five seconds which to me tells me that already I'm done and once we've determined that it's cooked long enough we'll stop and add the rest of the ingredients so I'll add a little touch of vanilla as well as our lemon zest and by the way if you want you can also add a little of dried fruit to this.

You're the boss at making this tyrone yours, so we'll stir it in followed by our toasted nuts and a pro tip: this is a lot easier if your nuts are hot, okay, room temperature or God forbid cold nuts In this, this mixture will get very hard, very quickly and it will be very difficult to get into the pan, so I like to reserve the nuts in a warm oven, which makes A mixture here much easier and as soon as everything is incorporated, we'll quickly transfer it to our prepared plate, spread it out and press it as best we can and it's probably not a bad idea to switch to a new clean product. spatula at this point, I think I should have drizzled with oil first, but I forgot that's okay, nothing that can't be washed or licked, so we're going to press and spread that mixture as evenly as possible and then cover that with our second piece of paper of wafer which by the way has a dull side and a shiny side and I think we want the shiny side up and then we'll go ahead and give it a little bit of pressure, which I always think First I need to put some plastic on to protect it from my sweaty hands, so we're going to press it a little bit and even though we want to press firmly, be careful, the paper will tear.

I broke mine a little right there, but it's okay. when we cut it no one will know and if you want your hands it's probably enough but to be safe I like to press it a little more with this meat mallet and then once our mixture has been transferred and pressed properly I'll just leave it out for an hour or two until completely cooled, at which point it will be nice and firm and ready to cut, so I let mine sit for a couple of hours before removing it from the pan, which thanks to my plastic wrap he left. pretty easy except the plastic messed up my taroni on the edges and I realized it would take me about 20 minutes to peel it off so I got frustrated and decided to just cut it off so I took a serrated knife and used a long sawing motion and pleasant.

Cut away to reveal what has to be one of the most beautiful sites in the entire food kingdom. Look at that, it's so beautiful, so I went ahead and cut it out and finally I was able to remove the plastic and at that point you can go ahead and cut. I'll shape it any way you want, I'll use the traditional square, and by the way, you'll see all kinds of tricks online on the best way to cut this. Everyone in their uncle has their own trick but for me just a long thin serrated knife is best and while you don't need to have wafer paper to make tyroni as you can see it really allows us to make nice clean cuts , so we'll go ahead and cut it into perfectly even squares. and I said perfect, so if you have to trim the end a little bit, that's fine and then we can go ahead and just discard that piece in our mouth and that's it, your tyrone is ready to enjoy and it doesn't just look like one.

One of the best things you have ever seen, the flavor and texture are incredible. I mean, it's basically firm and dry to the touch and at the same time, it's soft, flexible, and chewy. It seems impossible, but it is not. Check it. even out of focus you can see how good it's going to be and as you can see I think we have the absolutely perfect ratio of nutty to

nougat

so anyway that's how to make your own tyroni obviously it would be great to serve. on Valentine's Day or better yet, instead of doing it for why don't you do this with that person?

I mean, I don't know about you, but I can't think of a better way to spend an hour and a half with your Valentine. That will be just as enjoyable and satisfying as this, so I really hope you try it soon. Visit foodwishes.com for all ingredient quantities and more information, as always, and as always, enjoy.