SRIRACHA CASHEWS

I’ve seen the devil.

And it’s snacking in work. It’s the absolute devil. I actually think the devil is behind random hunger cravings but that’s neither here nor there. What I mean by work snacks is that snack you can reach for aimlessly whilst still typing. Not enough to fill but enough to satisfy. There’s always going to be someone offering the biscuits or the cake or the leftover catering and usually I’m on it like a rat up a drain pipe, but I’m a stone and a half down since New Year and I want to keep it that way.

Enter these cashews. True, my pantry is like a skyline of jars containing different nuts and seeds any given time of the year, but I’m always up for new ways to eat them. It was when I bought cashews for a curry that I found myself staring at a half empty pack of nuts like ‘There’s got to be more’. I took the nuts into work as a snack in between breakfast and lunch and while they were delicious in their own way, I needed something else. Just a kick.

This is where Sriracha entered the storyline. Sriracha is no stranger to this blog. Anybody who reads me consistently (I know some of you do – heeeeey!) knows that my love for Sriracha seeds no bounds. I even have a  recipe for Cold Peanut Sriracha Noodles. My friend Alex introduced me to the silky sauce in Leeds and then I spent forever trying to hunt down economy sized bottles to suit my cravings. Suffice to say my fridge has not been Sriracha-less for years and I will keep it that way.

I found that this two ingredient snack totally gave me what I needed. The spiciness almost curbs your appetite. You have a handful of these and you suddenly feel like you’ve had your fill, and your mouth is so spoiled from that spiky hot sauce that you feel as though it was just enough. You don’t crave for more nor do you want for less. So I buy bags of cashews now and batch bake so that I am never without these spicy nuts in work.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Scatter a bag of cashew nuts onto a shallow roasting tin and give the tin a shake so that the nuts fall into an even layer with no crowding. Place in the oven for about 10 minutes until they start to colour a little. Remove from the oven and squirt over a restrained – so not SOAKING them – in Sriracha sauce.

If you can’t get hold of Sriracha, your favourite hot sauce will do – but not sweet chili sauce. Give everything a shake so that they are all coated and put back in the oven for a further 7-10 minutes before removing and allowing to cool before handling.

My recommendation is to put them in one big tub and only take what you need to work. Reason being is while I do hold true that once you have a handful, you are satisfied – this only applies when a handful is all you have.

I once made the mistake of taking a big box to work so that it would last the week.

It lasted two days.

Learn from my mistakes, people.