
By The Hairy Bikers
With their distinctive flavour and their affinity for chocolate, hazelnuts play a starring role in our delicious chocolate cake and biscuit recipes. Or try them as a crunchy topping to salads or with our sweet fried scallops.
Ceps tortellini with roasted nuts and sage butter
Pasta primavera
Wild mushroom soup
Hazelnut butter grilled scallops with salad
Chocolate and stout cake
Breakfast muffins
Biscotti with hot mocha dipping sauce
Black cherry and hazelnut jam
Hazelnuts are globe-shaped or oval nuts up to 2cm/1in long with a hard brown shell. They grow in most parts of Britain, but cobnuts (a type of wild hazelnut) are particular to Kent. Most of the world's commercially grown hazelnuts come from Turkey. You may be able to buy fresh hazelnuts - particularly native cobnuts - still in their husks, but most are sold already dried and processed, whole, chopped, or ground, either in or out of their skins.
Use hazelnuts whole, grated or ground to flavour savoury and sweet dishes. Finely ground, they can be used in place of flour to make a ‘torte’; roughly chopped, they add crunch to biscuits or meringues. Use them as the basis for a stuffing or chop them up with some dried fruits and scatter the mixture onto your cereal. In Turkey, a sauce made from garlic and hazelnuts is served as an accompaniment to shellfish. Some recipes might call for ‘skinned hazelnuts’: if you don't have any ready-skinned, just roast some hazelnuts in the oven for a few minutes; when they’ve cooled slightly, rub the skins off with your fingers.
Type the ingredients you want to use, then click Go. For better results you can use quotation marks around phrases (e.g. "chicken breast"). Alternatively you can search by chef, programme, cuisine, diet, or dish (e.g. Lasagne).
BBC © 2013 The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Read more.
This page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.