Hazelnuts...love 'em, hate 'em
I love the taste of a nicely roasted and skinned hazelnut, but are they worth the trouble? My flour sack, "baking only" dishtowels need to be hidden from prying eyes, lest they think I am not doing my laundry often enough. Not even Oxyclean can get out the telltale purpley-brown rub. Since I want to use hazelnuts in one of my biscotti flavors, when I happened upon a new technique for skinning the nuts, and in my Baking with Julia, no less, I was compelled to try it.
Sounds great...blanch the hazelnuts in a boiling baking soda water bath until the water turns black, then drain the nuts and off pop the skins. Ha! Post bath, you are stuck with a colander full of hot nuts that you have to individually fondle to remove from the soggy skin. Then you have a soggy nut that tastes, well, soggy. Roasting in the oven didn't perk them up either. Eew. Waste of a good batch of nuts.
Seems like the only way is to roast, then rub in a towel to get off most of the skins. It does work nicely, and I do love the quiet, sizzling sound the nuts make. Perhaps it is all ok. Maybe that once-white towel loves her job.
posted by Amy at 10:25 PM
2 Comments:
We love toasted, skinned hazelnuts, maybe because I'm a bloke and don't wash the teatowels, it's never been an issue for me. The one issue I do have is when I make a hazelnut gateau that is topped with them, I always have to do more 'cause someone keeps pinching them.
Hey, thanks, Neil! You're my first ever blog commenter. What a thrill you've just given me. (I know about the pinching...I always have to toast about twice as many as I need for any given recipe!) ;)
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