Kitchen Project #204: All About Brazil Nuts
Welcome to a new edition of DANGEROUS GOODS by Camilla Wynne
Hello,
Welcome to today’s edition of Kitchen Projects. Thank you so much for being here.
Today, the brilliant Camilla Wynne is back with a new instalment of DANGEROUS GOODS, the column where she investigates ingredients with a dark side. In the past, we’ve learned about licorice to fruit pits to tonka beans, and today it’s time for BRAZIL NUTS! As ever, you’ll be treated to a series of recipes for a few poisonous pastries that celebrate the ingredient… safely, of course!
Camilla shares three brilliant Brazil nut bases: A nougatine, a milk chocolate shortbread and a flaky crust. Over on KP+, you’ve two ways to fill that rich crust: A tropical pineapple frangipane tart and an espresso-rum banana cream pie. Click here to make it!
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Love,
Nicola
DANGEROUS GOODS #4: BRAZIL NUTS
As someone who, anytime she is confronted with a bowl of mixed nuts, proceeds to relieve said bowl of all its Brazil nuts, I was just a little worried when googling them recently.
How odd, since the first time I remember considering them at all nutritionally (as opposed to gustatorily), it was in Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess. Of her three-ingredient rocky road (milk chocolate, marshmallows and Brazil nuts), she writes, “Ever since I read that Brazil nuts are inordinately good for you, containing essential selenium, and that you should probably have three a day, I have chosen to regard these as health food.”
The book was released in 1998—oh those simpler times. Sure, society was still in its low-fat SnackWells phase, but the internet was still pre-Myspace and the food pyramid was still right-side-up. Now it seems as though every second Brazil nut recipe online has a comment beneath it from some alarmist warning of the extreme dangers of Brazil nut overconsumption.
So, which is it? Should you be trying to eat 3 a day or is that the absolute most anyone should at one time lest it cause their immediate demise? As always, the answer is both and neither.
In his book, Ripe for Dessert, David Lebovitz writes that he “started using a lot of Brazil nuts years ago when [he] read that they were one of the few profitable crops that are friendly to the ecology of the South American rain forest.” The majority of the world’s crop comes from—wait for it—Brazil, though Bolivia and Peru contribute as well. In Brazil they are called by the Portuguese word for chestnuts, castanhas. While there do exist a few Brazil nut plantations, most of the crop comes from wild trees in Amazonian forests, harvested by castanheiros. The tree, Bertholettia excelsa, is enormous—up to 50 m tall and 30 m in diameter. Its branches only start very high up, making it basically unclimbable, so the fruit containing the Brazil nut is harvested by simply waiting for it to ripen and fall. And never mind whether eating too many Brazil nuts can be fatal—the fruit, which weighs up to 4.5 lbs, becomes acutely dangerous when falling from such a height. The castanheiros often wear protective wooden hats, but as a general rule people try to avoid the trees during windy or rainy spells, harvesting on calm ones and preparing the nuts on more treacherous days.
[Editor’s Note: I have been informed casually that Brazil nuts are actually a rare example of a food crop that can help support rainforest conservation. The trees grow in the Amazon and are still mostly harvested from wild forests, so giving the nuts value can help make the standing forest worth more than clearing it for timber or agriculture.]
Inside the thicky, woody shell of the fruit, one to two dozen nuts reside, arranged like the segments of an orange. They are also sometimes called cream nuts, owing to their rich flavor. Brazils contain about 66% fat—less than a buttery 75% fat macadamia but significantly more than a 50% fat almond. They are more creamy than buttery, with a mild earthy flavor. Because they’re so high in fat they go rancid more easily, which turns their earthiness downright mildewy. An incident with a bad Brazil can easily prejudice people against them for life, which seems like a terrible missed opportunity.
What of Selenium?
That said, too great an obsession with Brazils could lead to one’s eventual demise. It’s interesting—unlike other potentially toxic ingredients I’ve covered in this series, we actually need the element of the Brazil nut that can also harm us in excess. As I learned from Nigella, Brazil nuts contain selenium, an essential trace element. Our bodies need selenium to support thyroid hormone metabolism, immune system function and DNA synthesis. It’s an antioxidant that protects cells from damage! Other foods sources of selenium include mushrooms, oysters, sunflower seeds, eggs, organ meats and some fish. The amount of selenium in any given plant food depends on the selenium content of the soil in which it was grown, which can vary region to region, and then affects the selenium content of animals we eat. Not all Brazil nuts, therefore, contain the same amount of selenium.
Selenium deficiency is quite rare, but selenosis—a condition caused by an excess of selenium, even more so. That said, it’s a condition one wants to avoid, causing everything from garlic breath and hair loss in its nascent stages to serious conditions like pulmonary edema and liver cirrhosis and, irreversibly, death. To be fair to selenium, other essential trace elements like copper, zinc and iron can also mess you up if taken in excess. As always, the dose makes the poison. But it is good to keep in mind if you’ve just bought a large bag of Brazil nuts at Costco that calls to you, siren-like, every time you feel snacky.
Personally, I don’t think there are any foods I eat every single day, with the exception of coffee, but if you have a less varied diet and are mad for Brazil nuts, it is wise to not eat more than 3 per day at the maximum. I should think the occasional enjoyers of Brazils can go a little more wild every now and then—maybe eat a whole 10 nuts in one sitting. Apparently up to 50 at a time can cause acute toxicity, however. The bakes that follow must be shared!
The Brazil Nut Crust
Sometimes when I’m writing about a particular ingredient, I’ll go to the indices of a bunch of my cookbook, to see what other cooks and writers have gotten up to with them. The most remarkable finding this time was in my battered old copy of the 1961 New York Times Cook Book: a pie crust made of nothing more than ground Brazil nuts and sugar. Of course I had to make it.
The nut is high enough in fat that, when ground, it is moist enough to be amenable to being patted and shaped. Baked, it is toasty and golden brown. I used it for my first test of banana cream pie, though I painted it with chocolate before filling it with custard, as it seemed like it wouldn’t fare well when confronted with too much moisture. Indeed it did not! While tasty, it wasn’t quite sturdy enough to support so much moist filling, making it hard to get a clean slice. That said, it’s not a bad alternative if one is trying to avoid flour.
Instead, I settled on a Brazil-enriched pâte brisée, whose flaky and nubby texture was a beautiful contrast to the smoother fillings of both the recipes that follow: tart, with frangipane, and pie with the aforementioned custard. I took my usual recipe and subbed in ground Brazils for 24% of the flour and reduced the fat by 16%.
Baking with Brazils
While I love to pick the roasted Brazils out of a bowl of mixed nuts, I especially like baking with them. They are a mainstay in my fruitcakes as well as my fruitcake cookies. Their snappy texture holds up well in dough and batters. Brazils pair well with tropical flavours, as in the old adage “what grows together goes together.” In the recipes I developed for this piece, I used banana, pineapple, coffee, rum, vanilla and milk chocolate. If you really wanted to live dangerously, they’d be lovely with tonka beans, another subject of the Dangerous Goods series.
You can, of course, sub in Brazil nuts in recipes containing other nuts—just keep in mind that they are higher fat than most. When developing the pineapple Brazil frangipane tart, I had to compensate by removing an egg yolk and adding an extra 10g of flour to my standard almond frangipane recipe. So go forth and bake with those Brazils, just remember to adjust for fat and not eat too many. Keep the trace minerals in trace amounts!
RECIPE: Brazil Nut Nougatine
At one of the first (and best) pastry kitchens I worked in, under chef Patice Demers, we always had at least one nougatine on the go. Nothing more than toasted nuts sheathed in caramelised sugar, we would chop it up and sprinkle it on plated desserts, fold it into nougat glacé and bake it onto fruit galettes. It was a long time ago, so I’m not sure if it fell out of fashion or was only ever really in fashion in that one Montreal restaurant, but I’m ready to bring it back either way. My 3-year-old particularly likes to snack on this one.
Makes 300 g
Ingredients
100g Caster sugar
40ml Water
200g Brazil nuts, toasted (approx 15-20 mins on 160c fan) and roughly chopped
Method
Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and have close by.
In a small pot, combine sugar and water. Heat over medium-high until pale amber. Remove from heat and add nuts, stirring to coat. Scrape out onto prepared baking sheet and attempt to smooth it into an even layer. Let cool and set before using, about an hour, or store in an airtight container for up to 2 weeks.
Brazil & Milk Chocolate Shortbread
Chopped nougatine baked into cookies forms craggy pockets of toffee when the caramelized sugar melts into the dough. This shortbread uses ground nuts to assure a thorough infusion of Brazil flavor, punctuated by creamy milk chocolate, crispy Brazil toffee pockets and bursts of flaky salt.
Makes 16 (2-inch) cookies
Ingredients
130g Unsalted butter, at room temperature
60g Icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
150g All-purpose flour
30g ground Brazil nuts
1tsp flaky salt
80g Milk chocolate callets, or milk chocolate cut into ½ inch pieces
70g Brazil nut nougatine, from above, chopped
Method
Preheat the oven to 325°F / 140 °C fan. Grease an 8-inch square baking pan and line with parchment.
In a medium bowl, cream butter, icing sugar and vanilla until creamy. Add flour and ground nuts; mix until combined. Fold in chocolate and nougatine.
Transfer the dough to the prepared pan and pat it into an even layer. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes, until golden and set. Cool for 10 minutes on a wire rack, then use a metal bench scraper or knife to cut into 16 squares. Let cool completely.
Shortbread will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 weeks.
RECIPE: Flaky Brazil Nut Dough
I tested this dough by hand the first time and found it flakier than the double batch I subsequently made in the mixer, but only slightly. I would still employ the paddle and stand mixer if I was going to make more than a single batch—which you probably should so that you can make both the pie and tart. Double it up and freeze half for later.
Makes 350 g, enough for one 9-inch pie or tart
Ingredients
160g All-purpose flour
50g ground Brazil nuts
1 tsp Cater sugar
½ tsp Kosher salt
125g Cold nsalted butter, cut into pieces
45ml Ice water
Method
In a medium bowl, combine flour, ground nuts, sugar, salt and butter. Rub in the butter with your fingertips until the butter is incorporated, looking crumbly with butter bits the size of peas. Dribble in the water until the dough begins to come together, then press it into a disc. Wrap and refrigerate until firm enough to roll out (half an hour to an hour) before using (or freeze for up to two months).
To continue the Brazil Nut adventure head to KP+ for two glorious fillings for the Flaky Crust: An Espresso-Rum Banana Cream Pie and a Perfect Pineapple Frangipane Tart:
All the stuff about how they grow and the size of the trees is so interesting!