HS8795-73: Peanut Brittle with Strawberry and Pistachio 'Rust'

Inspired by C. Robert Cargill's Sea of Rust

My name is Brittle. Factory designation HS8795-73. A Simulacrum Model Caregiver. But I like Brittle.

Robots don’t eat, but Sea of Rust is still peppered with the figurative food of everyday speech and memories of food from former times. It’s not a world where what we humans eat is significant, but there are still food-inspired verbs like ‘sandwiched’ and ‘pancaked’; there are food-based endearments like ‘honey’ and ‘peach’; you can still ‘have beef’ or ‘go nuts’; heavy things drop ‘like a sack of potatoes’ and sharp knives still cut like ‘a knife through warm butter’.
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While none of these a meal make, our robot protagonist with the cracking name gave me a way in. My imitation cover art is peanut brittle with extra nuts, strawberry (jam) and peach – all flavours you’ll find mentioned in the book.

Once recreated, smash it up and devour the parts like your life depends on it.

Ingredients

• 100g golden caster sugar
• 2 tbsp water
• 1 heaped tbsp golden syrup (use the spoon like it's a spade)
• 100g peanuts
• 10g salted butter
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tbsp strawberry jam
• 25g pistachios, ground
• 1 circular peach slice

Special equipment: foil-lined baking parchment for the mould, a book, a jam thermometer (optional), a wooden spoon for stirring, a pastry brush for decorating

Preparation: 

• Use a book (appr. 20 x 12 cm) and foil-lined parchment paper to create a book-sized mould. The parchment paper should be on the inside of your mould for easy removal once the brittle is set. 
• Weigh all the ingredients in advance and have them to hand. You'll need to work quickly once the sugar starts heating up because hot sugar burns very easily. 
• Fill a bowl with cold water for testing when your brittle is ready. 

Cooking instructions

1. Put the sugar, water and golden syrup into a wide-bottomed saucepan and cook on a high heat, stirring frequently until the sugar has dissolved.
   'high heat' – my hob goes up to 6; I stayed mostly on 5 but went as low as 4 while I checked progress or feared burning.
   'stirring frequently' – I was in there with a wooden spoon about every 30 seconds
   'until the sugar has dissolved' – around 8-10 minutes
2. Add the peanuts, stirring frequently until the mixture reaches 150°C (300°F).
   '150°' – to test it's reached the right temperature,  drop a small amount of the liquid into your pre-prepared cold water then bite into your test piece. It's ready when it crunches like a hard-boiled sweet; it shouldn't be grainy (that means your sugar hasn't dissolved properly) or chewy (that means the mixture isn't hot enough yet).
3. Remove from the heat. Add the butter and the bicarbonate of soda, stirring quickly until it's all mixed in. Pour into the pre-prepared mould, making sure it covers the entire space. Leave to set for around an hour before removing the parchment paper. 
   'covers the entire space' – use the spoon to spread it about if necessary but work with speed because it will force gaps into the surface of your brittle
4. Decorate with strawberry jam, ground pistachios and the peach slice to look like the cover of Sea of Rust.  

If you enjoy working with sugar at speed, try my honeycomb inspired by John Gwynne's Malice.

If you want peanuts in a savoury dish, try the Kung Pao chicken recreated from Sylvain Neuvel's Sleeping Giants.