Culinary Tips From Chef Raven
Nuts
Someone asked me this week about skinning and toasting hazelnuts. The best way to skin any kind of nuts is to blanch them, in other words, drop them into a pot of boiling water for about a minute and then take them out of the pot and rub them briskly with a towel. The skins should come right off.
Then, preheat an oven to 350º, chop your nuts (if that's what the recipe calls for) and spread the nuts out on an ungreased cookie sheet and toast for about 8 minutes. Check them after 6 minutes and every minute thereafter. Nuts burn very easily.
Another nut hint: many people shy away from chopping nuts in a food processor because the oils that are released tend to give us clumped up soft piles of nuts. This can be easily remedied if the recipe you are making calls for flour or sugar. Add a couple of tablespoons of the flour (or sugar) to the processor with the nuts. Remember to use the pulse feature rather than just turning on the machine. This will give you nice, uniformly chopped nuts. But...remember to subtract from the recipe the amount of flour that you used to chop the nuts.
--- © Chef Raven
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