Harvest Moon

The season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is once again upon us. A baleful harvest moon illuminated the evenings of the equinox weekend, and the traditional Autumnal storms came billowing in from the Atlantic. None of this prevented us from breaking out the Apple pressing kit. 

We had been harvesting loads of Apples and on the Saturday, we set about pressing them into 35 litres of juice; I filled my demijohns, and several gallons are now merrily bubbling away, tuning into cider. The remaining juice was pasteurised and bottled up, ready for the forthcoming year.

We also collected enough Pears for me to produce my essential annual stock of Chunky Pear and Walnut Chutney. We still had Walnuts and Hazel nuts left over from last year, and fresh ones are falling already, early, like so many other things this year.

It turns out that the 2018 weather was perfect for vineyards and it promises to be a special vintage - we harvested our own grapes from our allotment and produced several gallons of tangy juice, most of which will be fermented into a new rose wine, Chateau Vin du Witts Hill, perhaps.

Sweet Chestnuts also look like they will be falling soon, we will be out gathering, and competing for the largest, fattest fruits to bring home and roasting them on our fire as the cooler, darker evenings draw in.

Ransoms & Flapjack

The plum and blackthorn flowers are wilting, and being replaced by cherry blossom, cheerful daffodils are giving way to beautiful bluebells. When walking in local woodland, bright green leaves are beginning to fill the hedges and trees, and the dappled shade is punctuated by the pungent aroma of wild garlic and ransoms.

April showers had persuaded us to work on some long overdue decorating jobs. The house was still in chaos so the kids and I decided to take a break from the mess and put some of our stored nuts to use, by revisiting one of our favourite recipes for delicious flapjack. 

We had baskets of hazelnuts and Walnuts left over from last summer and often had cracking/nibbling sessions but this little lot had me sat down with the nut cracker listening to the radio for a quite a while. I find this quite relaxing.

Other than the shelling, the kids did all the baking, and after a couple of hours weighing, mixing and cooking, they had created a superbly scrumptious result.

We have also been experimenting with various Ransom/Wild Garlic recipes. After a quick trip to the local woods, the kids made some delicious Garlic Butter. This is ingenious and can be stored in the fridge, then spread upon toast to create instant Garlic Bread!

We also tried scrambled eggs with shredded Ransoms, this turned out to be a simple but delicious twist on the traditional healthy snack.  We then combined Ransom leaves with further Walnuts, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper to make a very tasty Ransom Pesto to have with pasta. Our next project will be to pickle some Ransom Capers.

Meanwhile, the children have found an alternative use for our nut stash, hand-feeding an increasingly tame local squirrel!

Nutty Flapjack / Museli / Energy / Snack Bars

We had two baskets of Hazelnuts and Walnuts that had not been used since Christmas. The nuts had been sitting, lonely on the side and I reasoned that we ought to be able to make some super tasty muesli/energy/trail/snack bars using some of them.

My daughter did a little research to make up a simple recipe that used up ingredients that we already had in our cupboards. I told her that she should improvise and replace one thing with another if necessary. Flour, rolled oats, butter and syrup form the base of Flapjack, and whatever else you add makes it more interesting, tasty and nutritious.

The following is what we ended up with and it worked fantastically using our nuts and some other simple things that we had available.

Ingredients

• Self Raising Flour - 100g
• Rolled Oats - 300g
• Hazelnuts and Walnuts - 250g
• Flaked Coconut - 50g
• Sesame Seeds - 50g
• Pumpkin Seeds - 100g
• Raisins - 125g
• Soft Brown Sugar - 200g
• Butter - 200g
• Golden Syrup - 125ml

Method

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
2. Melt the butter and syrup in a saucepan then allow to cool for 5 mins before mixing thoroughly into the bowl with a spoon.
3. Using a baking tray about 2cm deep, line with greaseproof paper and then press the mixture into the tin.
4. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 170 degrees Centigrade for 25 minutes.
5. Allow the baked mixture to cool in the tin, it will be soft at first but will firm up as it gets colder.
6. Cut the delicious flapjack into squares and eat.
   

It will probably keep for a week or so in an airtight tin but it will never last that long in our house!

We Made Our Own Fliping Nutella

My daughter is a fan of Nutella and spreads it on everything, including her face sometime. Seeing as we had collected a vast amount of Hazelnuts, it seemed an obvious idea to make our own.

We Made This... Ta Da!

I made "nutella" once before and destroyed the drive cog on our blender in the process. I'm sure it was on the way out anyway...

Nuts!

We found several different methods but in the end, we chose one that used ingredients that we either had in the cupboards or could easily obtain locally.

Don't Burn Your Fingers and Don't Eat Too Many Before Weighing

This time we used a recipe from Oh Nuts! and everyone agreed that it tasted even better than the real thing. Plus not a drop of palm oil was used, so no need to apologise to the environment... By the time you read this, I'm sure we will be well into the making of our next batch.

Whisk and Whisk...

INGREDIENTS:

• 2.5 oz roasted unsalted hazelnuts (also available from shops!)
• 3/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
• 3 oz (about 1/2 cup) plain chocolate, finely chopped
• 3 tbsp honey. We used some donated by friends of the Urbane Forager.
• a food processor

French Foragers Honey From Friends

DIRECTIONS:

1. The first step is to toast the hazelnuts.  Toasting nuts adds a depth of flavour that’s important to the finished product. It also makes it easier to remove any remaining skins. So place your nuts in a preheated 200 degree C oven, and toast them until they’re brown and fragrant, about 10-12 minutes. Be sure to stir them every 3-4 minutes to keep them from burning. Once they’re toasted, remove the skins then set them aside (the nuts, not the skins) until they’re no longer hot.
2. The food processor is going to do most of the work in this recipe. Start by adding the cooled, toasted hazelnuts to the processor bowl. Turn the food processor on, and after a minute or two you’ll be left with very finely ground hazelnuts. Wonderful for sprinkling on pastries, but that’s not what we’re going for, so keep processing. After another minute, the nuts will start to clump together around the blade, and you’ll find you have a smooth paste. Add a touch of salt, and you've create a tasty hazelnut butter! But we want nutella, so turn that processor back on…

3. 

   Nice...

   After about 5 minutes, your hazelnuts should be processed into a liquid. Scrape down the sides and the blade and process until there are no lumps remaining. Set the hazelnuts aside while you prepare the chocolate portion of the recipe.
4. The chocolate will need to be melted, so we used the double boiler method on the stove-top. Whichever method you choose, combine the chopped chocolate, condensed milk, and honey in a bowl.
5. If you’re using a double boiler, put the bowl on a pan of simmering water on the stove-top, and heat it, stirring frequently, until the chocolate melts and the mixture is smooth. If you’re using the microwave, be sure to stir the mix after every 30 seconds to prevent overheating, and stop once everything is melted together.

6. 

   Messy Marbling

   Now you've barely done any work and the nutella’s almost finished. It’s magic! The final step is to add the warm chocolate mix to the bowl of the food processor that contains the liquefied hazelnuts.
7. Process the mix for 1-2 minutes more, until it smooths out, loses a little graininess, and gets shiny. The more you mix, the stiffer the nutella gets, so be sure to stop while it is still nice and spreadable.
8. We then added the mixture to clean, previously used (and we like to think), Up-cycled Nutella jars.
9. Ta Da!
   

   

   Into Jars (Before Eating)

   Don't forget to put, the Urbane Forager book on your Christmas present list. 

   Order your copy now!

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   the Urbane Forager: Fruit and Nuts for Free

   Author: Alan Gibson

   ISBN: 978-1-78507-300-7

   Now also available for your Kindle

Hazelnuts = Happiness

Hazelnuts are a very healthy food; they can be used in many ways and recipes are easy to find. We tend to eat them just on their own or mixed with Walnuts and raisins as a healthy snack. We made delicious Hazelnut Chocolate Spread one year, which proved very popular indeed with my daughter.

I heard a BBC R4 report recently, stating that Hazelnuts are in short supply this year because the harvest has failed... in Turkey... However, if you are in the UK August/September, these super-food nuts are ripening on a bush near you gratis and they look particularly abundant this year. 

The signs are easy to spot, if you know what you are looking for… The Squirrels will always come early to the table and the first signs will be nibbled green shells scattering the pavements.

You can pick and eat hazelnuts when they are still green, but we prefer to wait until they are brown and falling of their own accord.

Often there will be lots on the ground after a windy or rainy day but if they are wet, you will need to dry them out, if you do not plan to eat them straight away, otherwise they will go moldy.

Tasty Truffles

Last Sunday my daughter bought me some “truffles” as a Father’s Day gift. They were delicious but I found myself thinking that they tasted not unlike, our own homemade Hazelnut Chocolate Spread.

Yum! - Hazelnuts!

Last year we nearly destroyed our blender trying to create this stuff but it sure was tasty. A quick glance at the truffle ingredients confirmed that they were indeed made out of similar constituent parts. Experimentation was bound to follow…

Yum!  - Hazelnut Cocolate Spread!

We scooped out small amounts of the stiff spread and rolled them into balls. Then we trundled them about in a bowl of cocoa powder to prevent them from sticking to our fingers and each other. Next my daughter (the official tester) felt that she really ought to sample them. I was pretty sure what the result would be and yes, the outcome received a resounding thumbs up.

Yum! - the Urbane Forager's Truffles...

So that’s two recipes for the price of one; as well as a homemade gift idea!

Magnificent Muesli

I realised that we still had a large stash (several Kgs) of last year’s hazelnuts squirreled away in a cupboard and brought a basket load down to see if we could utilise them in some way. It didn’t take long for the kids to notice them and they were soon happily cracking away and munching handfuls of healthy nuts and making a merry mess of the carpet.

My partner then decided to make her favourite homemade muesli. I was subsequently tasked with cracking enough nuts to create a massive biscuit tin full of delicious, crunchy oat-based cereal. I’m sorry to tell you that the exact recipe for this blend of wholesome ingredients is, apparently, top secret.

I can’t remember how exactly how many nuts she used that night but I lost track of the plot of the film I had intended to watch; you need to concentrate or you can get tooth-challenging shell fragments in your muesli; not a good thing at bleary breakfast time.

While I was on the job, I thought I would make a box of tasty trail mix to take to work; I added our last walnuts, some raisins and any other titbits that could be foraged from the cupboard – The resulting combination made a pleasant contrast to my daily cheese sandwiches.

Hazelnut Chocolate Kamikaze

I thought it was about time that I got around to doing something with all the hazelnuts that we have accumulated over the last month…

10Kgs of Hazelnuts, Should Be Enough To See Us Through Winter
Last Year We Had Lots Of Walnuts

Making the Hazelnut-Chocolate-Spread, something I had promised the children I would do, seemed like an obvious place to start. I guessed that it might be a good idea to do it quickly, when they were not at home and then get the kids to clean the kitchen utensils using their tongues when they got back.

Get Shelling

I shelled the requisite amount of hazelnuts, I had the recipe, the ingredients and all the equipment lined up, everything was going according to plan.

Yum!

Then suddenly, the Head Chef’s kitchen blender started making a dreadful rattling noise and stopped spinning/blending. Closer inspection revealed the problem was that all the driving cog's teeth had sheared away. In my defence, they did look quite brittle beforehand.

I'm Sure That's Not Meant To Happen...
The Head Chef is Going to Kill Me!

Fortunately, the poor old blender had done just about enough work before it went into its Kamikaze tail spin of self-destruction. Although the finished spread was a little stiff – it tasted just how it should and went down a storm with the kids.

Hazelnutcases - Things To Do With Kids On A Rainy Day

It was just about the last day of the summer holidays; it was blowing a gale, raining hard and the children were bouncing off the walls.

What should we do?

7Kgs, Not a Bad Little Haul, Note the Apples & Pears Too

Call me crazy but I thought it was a great day for collecting hazelnuts, and as it transpired I was right.

We visited a spot close to where I work. Here the nuts fall onto the pavement, and despite the weather we gathered about 7Kgs in about half an hour. My children worked like squirrels and were delighted by the amount of goodies brought down by the storm.

The Squirrels Removing the Leafy Bits

While we were out, I noticed that some of my favourite apples were falling in the wind, so I grabbed a few of the ripest fruits while my kids, bless em, slipped off to play on the swings in the pouring rain. I got about 9Kgs of the tastiest eaters.

Sorted For Hazel/Cob Nuts

Of course everything was a bit wet when we got home, so we stripped the leafy bits off and then put the nuts and our soaking clothes in the airing cupboard to dry off.

The Usual Suspects For Filberts, Hazel or Cob Nuts

My Usual Suspects, fruit and (now) nut line-ups are becoming a definitive feature of the Urbane Forager blog. The main purpose they serve is to demonstrate the variety of shapes and colours within a species. Cob/Hazelnuts/Filberts are no exception; some are big and round some are small and pointy, some are flatter and some are triangular but they all taste good to eat.

The Usual Suspects Eating Apples - They All Taste Different and Great

Here is another one for the apples we collected this day, they all taste quite unique but these apples (and nuts) were all gathered from a tiny area, within about 30m of each other.

Hazelnuts, Delicious and Nutritious

Hazelnuts (also known as Cobnuts and Filberts) are versatile and flavoursome, they are also one of the most nutritious nuts, an excellent source of protein, vitamin E, dietary fibre, magnesium, and B vitamins. They are very low in saturated fat and high in healthy mono and polyunsaturated fats.

Little Brown Beauties

More importantly, hazelnuts are available for free, right now, in a hedgerow near you. These ubiquitous hard-backed, brown beauties can be found in many hedges and woodland but roadside hedges are often easier because the nuts are simple to see when they drop onto the pavement.

Unripe Nuts on the Pavement

Hazelnuts can be eaten unripe, when the squirrels start – you will see the evidence of this on the floor in the form of crushed and nibbled shells with emerald collars. Personally, I prefer not to pick them off the trees but to collect them when they are falling naturally, after ripening; they look brown and will have fallen free of their collars. I collected my first load this week during my lunch hour; I bring a few home each day in my sandwich box (or hat) to be eaten, cooked or squirrelled away for the winter months.

A Hatfull of Hazelnuts

The first nuts started dropping in early September and these do tend to taste a bit green, so I leave them out in the sun for a while before using them. Never leave them outside unattended though, or the local squirrels will soon have them away (these grey-coated gangsters are the pickpockets of the rodent world).

Hazelnuts Ripening on a Tree in June

There are of course oodles of tasty recipes for spreads, snacks, meals, puddings and lots of other ways of preparing them. I made a lovely trail mix this year and I may experiment with drying/dehydrating other fruit to supplement my latest hoard. First though, I intend to make Chocolate & Hazelnut Spread with the children. I have a feeling that this might prove popular...

Urbane Forager free-seasonal-tree-id-sheets-ready

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/hazelnut

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2007/sep/08/features.recipes

Last year I kept my little store in a wicker waste-paper basket in the airing cupboard, which dried them out nicely and they tasted great up until May when I finished them.

Don't Throw These Away