A bag of raw Hazelnuts was one of my ‘Ooo, look, an ingredient I haven’t cooked with before’ impulse kind of buys. I did have some grand plans to buy some pigeon breasts and make a warm salad with the hazelnuts and blackberries, but they were soon laid to waste. As the raw hazelnuts started looking more & more tired, I came across a recipe in an Olive magazine for Hazelnut & Sesame Nuggets, so I decided to pep that up a bit and make it my own.

Recipe for Pedro Ximenez, Sesame & Hazelnut Clusters

Shelled Hazelnuts (I ended up with about 100g)

25g Sesame Seeds

200g Golden Caster Sugar

Glug of Pedro Ximenex Sherry

Chop the nuts and toast for a few minutes in a dry frying pan. Remove and then toast the sesame seeds in the same pan until golden brown, before mixing with the nuts. Stick the sugar in a pan and pour enough water to just cover the sugar. Put on a low heat and stir until the sugar dissolves. Up the heat and simmer for about 8 minutes, but instead of stirring, jiggle the pan a bit every now and then to stop the mixture from sticking. As soon as it goes a golden, caramel kind of colour, add the sherry and cook for another couple of minutes. Remove from the heat and mix in the sesame seeds & nuts, before dropping spoonfuls on a pre-prepared baking tray lined with baking paper. Allow to cool for an hour or so before storing in an airtight container.

This was a pretty easy dish, apart from the shelling of the nuts. I swear it took me about 45 minutes to get through the bag I had, producing a paltry third of a bowl of nuts. It felt like it would have been quicker to catch a squirrel and train it to do the job for me by the time I’d finished. The clusters didn’t taste enough of the sherry for my liking, so maybe I should have cooking the mixture for less time after the sherry had been added. I also had hoped for a bit more crunch, but maybe that was down to my not cooking the sugar for long enough. Worth another go, I think.