Autumn is nut season, and there’s nothing better to eat right now than a fresh roasted Oregon hazelnut, its flesh golden with a deep brown center.
Americans love nuts — they can’t get enough of peanuts in all their forms, eat a huge amount of pecans, walnuts, pistachios and in the past couple of generations, pine nuts.
But they don’t eat alot of hazelnuts. Compared with Americans, Italians consume thirty times as much hazelnuts per capita.
This is America’s loss, because I believe the hazelnut is the most complex, assertive and deeply flavored of all nuts. The Italians, the world’s leading consumer of hazelnuts, love them in all forms: whole in pastas, as a flour, as a paste, as an oil, mixed with chocolate to make Gianduja, in ice cream, in liqueur (in the tooth-achingly sweet Frangelico), in syrups to flavor coffee and, of course, in Nutella.
At Olivea, my wife, Yasmin (the pastry chef), uses them to make a moist, chewy nut meringue called a dacquoise, which shares the plate with a chocolate crema and a Gianduja-flavored gelato. I incorporate them in a fall salad of mizuna, figs and Black River Gorgonzola, with a fragrant dressing of olive oil, red wine vinegar, pancetta, shallots and sage leaves.
My favorite way to eat hazelnuts is in the savory biscuit recipe here, which uses a little oatmeal to give it moisture and complexity. The hazelnut biscuits are especially good with cow’s milk blue cheeses and goat cheeses. The dough can be made well ahead of time and frozen.
John Broening just debuted a new autumn menu at Olivea: olivea-restaurant.com.
Hazelnut Biscuits
Makes 48
Ingredients
3/4 cup blanched hazelnuts, lightly toasted
1 tablespoon brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup old-fashioned oats
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
4 tablespoons cold buttermilk
Directions
Preheat oven to 340 degrees.
In a food processor, mix nuts with sugar and oats until finely ground. Add flour, baking soda and salt, pulsing to combine. Cut butter into small pieces and add to flour mixture, pulsing until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add buttermilk and pulse just until the dough begins to hold together.
Divide dough into two equal portions. Place each portion on a piece of plastic wrap; flatten into disks. Refrigerate until firm, at least half an hour or up to 1 week. When ready to use, lightly dust work surface with flour. Roll out one portion of dough to 1/8-inch thick. Using a small (1-inch) cookie cutter, cut out biscuits. Transfer the rounds to a nonstick baking sheet. Bake until golden around the edges and slightly firm to the touch, 12 to 15 minutes. Let cool on baking sheet 1 minute and then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
