Simple Spanish Food

Spanish Hard Almond Nougat, Turrón Duro, Turrón de Alicante

Many Spanish sweets, such as turrón de guirlache or Spanish bonbons, are truly easy to make, but  others, unfortunately, are not.  Spanish hard almond nougat, alas,  falls into the latter category.    While a turrón de guirlache is so easy to make that I wouldn't bother buying it unless I just happened to be in Madrid walking by Casa Mira, the various types of hard almond nougat (turrón de Alicante, torta imperial de almendras, turrón duro) are best left to the professionals.

Making hard almond nougat involves whipping egg whites to soft peaks, boiling honey and sugar to a hard-crack stage, carefully blending the two together over very low heat and whipping them for a long, long time. Make one mistake and you won't have hard almond nougat but a soft, plasticky paste.  If I ever find an easy recipe for turrón duro, I promise I will post it. Until then, I'm buying it. 

The best place I know of to buy turrón duro, as well as any other type of turrón, is the Madrid candy shop, Casa Mira.

Here in the U.S. the Spanish on-line food store La Tienda has a good selection of turrones, including hard, crunchy turrones de Alicante.  Note that the turrón de Jijona, also available at La Tienda, is soft and a very different sort of candy.

These packaged turrones duros are relatively thin, from half an inch to and inch or so thick. As a result, they're easy to eat. You just break off a piece and munch. 

Just so you know:  the thin paper on the outside of many turrones duros  is wafer paper. You're supposed to eat it with the turrón, not peel it off.

The true old-style turrón de Alicante was made in a thick wheel about the size and shape of a whole manchego cheese. Look at the 6-inch slabs on the top shelf (to the right) in Casa Mira's display window:

Thick wheels of turrón de Alicante are delicious, but they can be a bit difficult to eat. This candy is quite hard and very crunchy.  Andrés, my father-in-law, used to chisel it apart with a sturdy table knife and a tiny hammer!

Though it's tricky to make, turrón duro is as simple as candy gets: it should contain nothing but toasted almonds, good honey, some sugar, and egg whites--and nothing else. The flavor and texture is similar to an almond brittle but distinct. And the various types of turrón duro, as well as the products of different stores and brands, are subtly different from each other too.

Turrón duro is tradionally enjoyed during the Christmas holidays and Kings' Day, Día de Reyes, and it is still most popular at that time of year.  Esperanza, my mother-in-law, buys an assortment of turrones and we enjoy them through the whole holiday season. 

 

 

An Easy Recipe for Spanish Almond Brittle, turrón de guirlache o torta de guirlache

Guirlache--a dark almond brittle--is an old-fashioned Spanish candy traditionally enjoyed around Christmas and Día de Reyes, King's Day, along with many other holiday sweets and cookies,  such as bombones de chocolate o divinos, chocolate pralines (pralinés de chocolate), and cookies such as mantecados and polvorones .  See La Tienda's dessert page for a large selection of Spanish Holiday sweets.  

Andrés, my father-in-law, loved guirlache, and I do too. It's one of my all-time favorite candies. What makes guirlache so special is that the sugar and nuts are toasted deep brown until they take on  spicy, almost piquant flavors. 

If you are in Madrid, a great place to buy artisanal guirlache is the famous old candy and pastry shop, Casa Mira.

Also, mass-produced guirlaches are now available in supermarkets all over the country. These are good, though they lack the super-high quality of artisanal guirlache.

Here in the U.S.  the Spanish on-line food store La Tienda carries a good brand of turrón de guirlache.

A turrón de guirlache is one of the easiest Spanish candies to make at home. Nothing could be simpler.  It's just almonds and sugar.   The key is all in the timing. You want to deeply toast  the sugar and almonds without burning them.  This can be done by eye. No candy thermometer necessary.   

You can also experiment with different types of sugar for flavor variations.  For this post I used a demerara type natural brown sugar.

Here's the recipe

Ingredients

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of raw almonds

First, peel the almonds. This is easy. Just bring a pot of water to a boil. Throw in the almonds. Let them boil 30 seconds. Drain them and rinse them off until they're cool enough to handle. Now they will be easy to peel.

Now cook the sugar over medium heat in a heavy bottom pot.

When it melts, stir in the almonds.

Cook the almonds and sugar until deeply toasted. The color of most guirlaches is between amber brown and chocolate brown.

Place a piece of lightly oil parchment on a cutting board, a baking sheet, a piece of marble, or anything else flat that can take heat. Pour the almonds and sugar onto the parchement. With wooden spoons or spatulas, give it the shape you like. Circles (tortas) and rectangles (turrón) are typical.

The candy will begin to harden. Before it becomes completely hard, cut it into pieces with a knife.

Let the guirlache cool completely, and there you have it.