Cobnut Recipes…And Amazing Carrot Bacon

Perhaps it’s the weather, perhaps we’ve just never noticed them before, but suddenly the hedgerow is full of cobnuts.

Not that they’re easy to find – you can stand in front of a hazel tree for five minutes without seeing anything and then, as your eye adjusts, you start to spot small clusters of frilly husks.

Here are some lovely cobnut recipes. And if you miss the harvest, these all work well with bought hazelnuts too.

Cobnuts

When to pick cobnuts

You can pick cobnuts when they’re green (from mid to late September) or take your chances that the squirrels won’t get them first and hang on till they’re proper brown nuts in October.

The green ones (and only pick bigger green ones, or you might just find empty shells) taste more like a pea or subtle coconut than hazelnut, but roast them for a while and they’ll develop a delicious fresh hazelnut taste.

If you plan to store them, don’t remove the green husks unless the round shell pops out easily. Keep green ones in the fridge, but move them around a bit to stop moisture getting trapped. You can also store them somewhere cool and dry in a basket that allows air to circulate – again, move them around each day.

There are plenty of recipes out there, but many of them really don’t do justice to the freshness of just-picked cobnuts. We wanted something that made the nuts the star of a campfire meal. The carrot bacon is just gorgeous (beats meat in a BLT!) and it gets even more special with the addition of toasted cobnut.

blackberrying

Picking blackberries for the sauce and a bit of kindling for the fire

 

goat's cheese

Warm goat’s cheese and cobnut salad with fresh blackberry dressing

Ingredients (for two)

  • Two round goat’s cheese (with rind)
  • A handful of shelled cobnuts
  • A handful of blackberries
  • Sugar or honey
  • Balsamic vinegar
  • Mixed salad leaves (and maybe some watercress)
  1. Chop your cobnuts a little and then ‘toast’ in a frying pan till golden and nutty-smelling. Set aside.
  2. Put your blackberries with a dash or two of balsamic vinegar into a small pan. Add tablespoon or so of sugar. Cook until the blackberries are soft and the liquid has gone syrupy. Test for flavour – you want a good balance of sweet and sour.
  3. Now to the goat’s cheese. It’s far easier, of course, to grill or bake goat’s cheese, but it is possible to pan-fry it over a campfire or rocket stove. If you can freeze the cheese first, that will help stop if running everywhere. Another option is to coat it in beaten egg and breadcumbs so that it holds together. A third option is to dust it in flour, and the fourth is just to accept that you might end up with goat’s cheese splodge. Cheese with rind is more likely to stay intact.

  4. Put some oil in your frying pan and get it very hot. Slide in the goat’s cheese rounds and cook quickly. As soon as they start to brown, flip them onto the other side.
  5. Toss your salad with a squeeze of lemon juice, a dash of oil (walnut or hazelnut would be delicious) and a pinch of salt and pepper. Arrange on your plates, top with the cheese, sprinkle over the cobnuts and, finally, drizzle with your blackberry dressing.

Cobnuts and carrot bacon

Turn this combination into a salad, a pancake or omelette topping or even filling for a toasted sandwich with avocado, cheese or houmous.

Ingredients (for two)

  • A handful of shelled cobnuts
  • One largeish carrot (you’ll be slicing it into thin slivers the size of bacon rashers, so choose your size accordingly)
  • 1tbsp tahini
  • 1tbsp mild oil
  • 1/2tbsp maple syrup
  • 1 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1tsp liquid smokesmoke powder or smoked paprika (the two we’ve linked to here are our favourites for taste and all-natural smokiness)
  1. Toast or dry fry your cobnuts and bash them up into small pieces.
  2. Using a good vegetable peeler, peel slices of carrot lengthways. Turn the carrot over now and again to get as many slices as you can. Eat the leftover stump while you cook!
  3. Mix all the remaining ingredients and add the carrot slices, gently mixing to cover. Leave to marinade for as long as you can. If you think there’s masses of marinade to carrot, slice another – you can never have enough.
  4. Lay out the carrot slices on a parchment-lined tray. Oven cook at 180C-ish until they’re starting to brown. It could be around 10 minutes, but keep an eye on them because the sugar tends to char if your oven is too hot or they cook for too long.
  5. You can also do them in a frying pan, but watch for the sugar burning.
  6. They won’t stay crispy for long, but are just as nice floppy. And even nicer the next day.
  7. Use these two star ingredients to make salads and sandwiches delicious.

Toasted cobnut pesto for pasta and spreading

  • A handful each of fresh basil and parsley
  • Around 50g grated parmesan (or a mix of nutritional yeast and sunflower seeds for a vegan version)
  • 25 ml olive oil
  • A clove of garlic
  • 100g lightly toasted/roasted cobnuts

  1. Reserve a few nuts for topping.

  2. Whizz everything together in your processor. The Zyliss hand-powered food processor we take camping doesn’t need electricity and is great for making quick spreads, houmous and pestos.

  3. Add salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.

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