Skagit Cooks

Hazelnut-Cherry Granola
Granola Recipe courtesy Alton Brown as modified by Saara
original recipe at the FoodNetwork

3 cups rolled oats

1 cup toasted hazelnuts

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons maple syrup

1/4 cup vegetable oil

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup dried cherries

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F.

In a large bowl, combine the oats, nuts, and brown sugar.

In a separate bowl, combine maple syrup, oil, and salt. Combine both mixtures and pour onto 2 sheet pans. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes to achieve an even color.

Remove from oven and transfer into a large bowl. Add cherries and mix until evenly distributed.

Saara’s notes: I use Bob’s Red Mill extra thick cut organic rolled oats and Spectrum’s expeller-pressed safflower oil.

“Successful farmers have social relations with one another, while hunter-gatherers have ecological relations with hazelnuts”. - Richard Bradley, 1984

I certainly have a relationship with hazelnuts - they’re my favorite nut! I like to sprinkle them on salads, press them into a crust for a salmon fillet, jazz up green beans, bake them into cookies, and best of all, drench them in bittersweet chocolate. I’ve even been known to eat them all by themselves.

NutritionData on 1 cup (115 g) hazelnuts

“This food is very low in Cholesterol and Sodium. It is also a good source of Vitamin E (Alpha Tocopherol) and Copper, and a very good source of Manganese.”

Thumbprints for Us Big Guys
Recipe by Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home to Yours (2006)
Makes about 60 cookies

1 3/4 cups finely ground hazelnuts

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

About 1 cup raspberry jam (or the jam or marmalade of your choice)

Getting ready: Position oven racks to divide oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

Whisk together the ground nuts and flour.

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment,or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar together on medium speed until light and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the extracts and beat to blend.
Reduce the mixer speed to low and gradually add the nut-flour mixture, mixing only until it is incorporated into the dough.

Working with a teaspoonful of dough at a time, roll the dough between your palms to form small balls and place the balls 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Steadying each cookie with the thumb and a finger of one hand, use the pinkie of your other hand (or the end of a wooden spoon) to poke a hole in the center of each cookie. Be careful not to go all the way down to the baking sheet.

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and front to back at the midway point. The cookies should be only slightly colored—they may even look underdone, which is fine: they should not be overbaked. When the cookies are baked, remove the baking sheets from the oven and let the cookies rest on the sheets for 2 minutes before transferring them to cooling racks with a wide metal spatula and sifting confectioners’ sugar over them.

Repeat with the remaining dough, remembering to cool the baking sheets before baking the next batch.

Bring the jam to a boil in a small saucepan over low heat, or bring to a boil in a microwave oven; remove from the heat. Fill the indentations of all the cookies with enough of the hot jam to come level with the tops. Cool to room temperature.

Saara’s notes: I ground the hazelnuts in my food processor, but Holmquist Hazelnut Orchards has hazelnut flour at the same price as whole nuts. Other combinations such as pecan flour and pumpkin butter or walnut flour and apple butter might be good as well.

I’ve decided to create this recipe and seasonal eating blog to be a companion to Feasting in the Skagit Foodshed (SFS) in order to provide more information and recipe suggestions for our local foods. It’s all well and good to know you can pick nettles in the spring and that sunchokes are sweetest after the first frost, but not so useful if you don’t know what to do with them once they’re in your kitchen.

At the top of the page, you’ll see a list of what is in season for the month. If you’re trying to eat local and in season, these are the foods that you might focus on. In parentheses, I also include a few things that are in season in California and, in winter, available from the hothouses in BC.

For example, in January we can still get a few pomegranates and date harvest has begun down in California, but even though there are also artichokes and broccoli being harvested, they aren’t included because they grow here.

The hothouse options are listed since we all need a little fresh crunch in our lives occasionally and they provide some color to our winter plates. Check the package to make sure it’s grown in BC so you don’t inadvertently spend all your food miles on Mexican produce. On a personal note, I very rarely buy the hothouse tomatoes but the cucumbers and bell peppers are regulars in my crisper drawer throughout the cold months. After the first spring harvest, I don’t see them again until the snows fly.

Bananas and pineapples will not make the list since they’re shipped from too far away. Since we need to remain realistic, I personally try to limit these exotic treats to only fair-trade organics and preferably shipped rather than flown. Yes, that’s more expensive, but I can afford one pricey pineapple per year. Most of the tropical fruits are available year round, but if there’s a harvest season, the results are so much more delicious. I’ll note it if I’m aware of it.

You’ll also notice that I make use of frozen vegetables, dehydrated mushrooms and canned fruits that I’ve put up when they were at their best. You saw some of it going on at SFS this fall if you were following along. Remember to use what you have put up! Peach cobbler is spectacular during the cold dark days of February.

I guess that’s about it. Welcome to my kitchen!