Hazelnuts Kind of Suck

My freezer is full of nuts. I like to keep a supply of pecans and walnuts and also slivered almonds handy. Salted cashews for turtles are essential. And honey roasted peanuts and regular salted peanuts are always welcome. Hazelnuts however I've never valued much. Sometime in the 1980s they became all the rage, about the same time the Silver Palate Cookbook and Nutella and raspberry vinaigrette and shoulder pads hit the scene. All I think were drastically over-rated.  

Hazenuts I find a bit more woodsy than nutty, and not in a good way, beside which the paper skins are a drag to remove, though a quick bath in boiling water loaded with baking soda loosens them nicely. I just don't like them, and also I associate them unpleasantly with the Pacific northwest, so I can't explain why I had a bag in my freezer. I assume that the hazelnut grinch didn't put them there, that I must have bought them for some recipe that made little enough impression that I don't remember it.

Every few months I find myself standing in front of my freezer, rummaging through all the little ziplocked bags I've collected, reviewing them like a set of frozen notes to self, a polar to do list. The hazelnuts caught me off guard. Normally I am hoarding stuff because I like it, because I am saving it for a special occasion or because it is so good I am pacing myself. Much less ordinary is to find something I don't care about. But I don't like waste. And like everyone else these days, I am enjoying as best I can (actually I could do better) the pleasures of frugality demanded by necessity.

The hazelnuts were a challenge, not of the life-altering sort, or even the gee I am pleased with myself for doing that sort, like a mountain in Oaxaca I once climbed, but still it was a challenge to skin them comprehensively and find a recipe that would play well on their modest appeal. These bars are the result. A honey caramel lays over a crust that falls at about the midpoint between shortbread and sugar cookie, which is to say it uses an egg yolk and has a fairly moist crumb. Some milk chocolate left over from a candy making session tops them off.

I think I dispatched the hazelnuts reasonably successfully. But now instead of a twelve ounce bag tucked into a corner, I find a big rectangular container of these bars hogging precious freezer real estate.

On a different note, here is a picture of the improvised light box I am using to take my pictures. The umbrella has been in my closet for about a decade, and was in the trunk of my car for about a decade before that. They are clumsy devices I think to carry and just a source of worry. Umbrellas are for the Avengers and Princess Diana and persons with manservants. Everyone else should get a raincoat with a hood. So I am especially pleased finally to put it to some good use. Now I need to learn how to use Photoshop to take down some of the unpleasant  orange glow on the reflector of the clip lamp on the right side.