Mash Does Fındık Ezmesi

Last night, the lovely Russian lady who lives beneath me gave me a bagful of hazelnuts that came from her husband's family's property somewhere up in Svaneti. I wasn't quite sure what to do with them, but, luckily, a few Facebook friends came to the rescue with the idea of making a hazelnut butter or something Nutella-like. I spent the better part of the afternoon tracking down a nutcracker (after asking one of my teachers to write down the translation of 'nutcracker' into Georgian so I could run around and show it to various shop owners) and also shopping for a food processor. The hazelnut butter, which is super similar to fındık ezmesi, a hazelnut spread I often buy when I'm in Turkey (hazelnuts + sugar + vanilla = yum), was pretty straightforward to make.

For my version, I shelled about 2C worth of hazelnuts, food processored the heck out of them (the nuts were raw and I didn't take the paper off), added a bit of olive oil to make the concoction a bit stickier (I used olive oil because that's what I had on hand), and added a bit of sugar. In hindsight, I should have added cardamom, too, but that's something I'll try next time. What I ended up with isn't quite spreadable enough to put on bread, but it will be really great on oatmeal.

My first attempt at a nut butter. Aside from shelling the little suckers (and the time spent tracking down the nutcracker), the process was simple. I'll be doing this again.

The great gift of nuts.

I wish I'd had someone else around to help me do this.

My brand spankin' new food processor.

The final product.