Sunday 23 January 2011

Ingredient 3 - Hazelnuts

Also known as filbert and cobnut (referring to cultivated rather than wild varieties) and chocolate's perfect partner, the hazelnut is ingredient number 3.

I've become a huge fan of Niki Segnit's beautifully written book The Flavour Thesaurus (thank you to Jo and Thom for my copy for Christmas). The chapter on hazelnuts made my mouth water and got my creative juices flowing with the thought of experimenting with hazelnut oil, liqueurs and hazelnut butter.

The book takes different ingredients (categorised into sections such as "Earthy", "Spicy", "Woodland") and matches them to their ideal partners. Some are expected e.g. hazelnut and chocolate, but some are more interesting e.g. pineapple and anchovy. It's packed with ideas and one thing that really interested me in the hazelnut chapter is the concept that it could be the finest flavour in the world. Segnit notes that the hazelnut's sweet, delicate, buttery flavours can be detected in, amongst other luxury foods, caviar, champagne, oysters, French farmhouse butter and Beaufort cheese. So I'm now convinced that some delicious hazelnut containing creations can come out of the kitchen.

It only seems right to try out one of Segnit's recipes first - Apple & Hazelnut Cake...