At the moment I'm working on a lifestyle volume entitled "CELTIC" which, as the title would suggest, is a food and lifestyle journal about the ancient Celtic ways of life. Today I was at home with a migraine, and decided to make progress on the recipe section of the journal.
I brewed up some homemade "hazelnut milk" following an old recipe I found on line, tweaking it slightly to suit my purpose.
"Nut
milks, made from boiling together ground almonds or walnuts with boiling water
were a common ingredient in Medieval cookery. We know that our ancient
hunter-gatherer ancestors collected lots of hazelnuts during late summer.
Making a milk from dried nuts is very easy and it's inconceivable that Stone
Age and Iron Age peoples did not make hazelnut milk both as a drink and as a
base for stews.
Ingredients: 200g ground hazel nuts, 500ml boiling water
Method: Combine
the ground hazelnuts and boiling water and allow to steep for five minutes,
stirring occasionally. You can then either sieve the mixture to remove any
coarse grains or you can blend the mixture until smooth in a blender (this is
the preferred option). There are many variations to the basic hazelnut milk
recipe. Some require the use of stocks or broths to make the hazelnut milk. For
desserts you can also make a sweetened hazelnut milk, with the addition of
about 50ml of honey to the quantities above."
It is scrummy on its own, but also a wonderful alternative to regular milk in coffee or hot chocolate.
So it's been a VERY long time since I've posted anything on here, but, and this time I mean but, my new years resolution (one of them) is to blog more regularly. Fingers crossed. Hope everybody had a fab 2013, and is looking forward to what is yet to come.
