KEY POINTS:
In New Zealand in autumn we harvest our fabulous hazelnuts and the first of the season are now in the shops. The word hazel comes from the Anglo-Saxon haesil, meaning head-dress. The small nuts with their hard brown shells grow in clusters of one to four within a husk which looks like a little helmet.
Hazelnut trees are pretty and even sometimes form part of a hedgerow. White heart, which is pale with a creamy taste and texture, is the one most-commonly grown variety in this country.
Hazelnuts are easy to deal with - the husk splits and falls off on its own a few days after the nuts drop off the tree and with a little roasting or blanching the skin slips off easily.
Growers harvest hazelnuts with a machine like a huge vacuum-cleaner.
Fresh hazelnuts, straight from the shell, are fantastic raw with their slightly sweet taste, creamy texture and crunch. Toasted, they develop a stronger nutty taste and crispy texture, taking on more smokiness and robustness.
Toasting them is simple - just spread them on a shallow baking pan and toast them in the oven at 140C for about 20 minutes or until the nut meat turns light golden and the skins crack. They are good in sweet and savoury cooking - cakes, pastes for pasta, sweets like nougat and turkish delight, pastry, salads, stews and terrines.
Hazelnuts are good for you too - eating them lowers cholesterol and blood-sugar levels. Growers make cold-pressed oil, hazelnut flour, paste, delicious dukkah, candy-coated nuts and roasted salted nuts. Hazelnut oil has a rich, gold colour and a sweet nutty taste.
Its high flashpoint makes it ideal for cooking and it has a shelf life of about 12 months if stored in a dark cupboard. It can be used as you would use olive oil and is excellent in baking, over vegetables, in dressings or on its own with breads and dukkah.
Hazelnut flour is usually used with white flour in baking. Add it to biscuits, muffins and breads, replacing about a quarter of the plain flour. If using self-raising flour then add a teaspoon of baking powder to each cup of hazelnut flour.
You can make simple recipes such as hazelnut meringue, linguini with mushrooms and hazelnuts, and hazelnut oil vinaigrette.
This risotto recipe brings out all the sweetness of hazelnuts. My favourite brand is Hazelz Dry Roasted because you have no work to do except for opening the packet and devouring them. The dry-roasting process makes them light and crunchy.
In Italy they serve risotto really al dente and creamy, in other words a bit hard to the tooth and wet. We tend to overcook it and have it looking like porridge. If there are any fresh figs left, they go beautifully with this dish, or pears are a good substitute.
- Detours, HoS