Cracking hazlenut recipes - Telegraph The hazelnut is a soprano. The walnut is low and gruff, almost meaty (with a touch of bitterness). The pecan is the next up - a gently woody tenor. But it's the hazelnut that hits the top notes. You might guess that just by looking at it. It's a feminine nut: small, beautifully curved and sculpted, tapered at one end. Its russet shell looks smooth and well cared for, quite unlike the walnut's corrugated casing. These nuts can generally be used interchangeably - a classic pear, blue cheese and chicory salad is as good with walnuts as it is with hazelnuts - but their pitches are very different. The walnut provides a low hum against the pear's sweetness; the hazelnut sings along with it. There are some foods that those top, toasty hazelnut notes were created for, though, where walnuts will not do. When I was a girl I always went for Dairy Milk Whole Nut and Topic ('the bar with a hazelnut in every bite'). Even now my favourite indulgent snack is a square of dark chocolate and three hazelnuts with their skins still on. If the nuts are toasted, even better; the skins become slightly tobacco-y. Add coffee and I'm a hopeless addict. Hazelnuts don't always love dark, rich flavours, though. They're surprisingly good with raspberries - think of the classic hazelnut meringue cake, a dacquoise, speckled with ground hazelnuts and filled with cream and tart berries. And let's not forget apples. One of the loveliest endings to an early-autumn meal is a bowl of young hazelnuts, new-season apples and a hunk of mature cheddar. When hazelnuts are really young - the end of August until mid September - they have a milky, sweet flavour that is perfect with the taut sweet-acid flesh of apples. But they soon start to dry, become more concentrated in flavour and develop the toasty notes we so love. The hazelnut's savoury buddies aren't quite as obvious, but they're good with beaufort cheese, and there is something in them that likes onions. A hazelnut-oil vinaigrette is both unexpected and brilliant with leeks. Spaniards dip griddled young onions (called calçots) in salsa romesco, a purée of roasted peppers, garlic and hazelnuts. In fact, you need mentally to move the hazelnut from smoky English autumns to Mediterranean ones if you want to appreciate its full potential. They're good in a stuffing for pork; chopped with orange zest, garlic and parsley and thrown over roast pumpkin; or puréed with olive oil and garlic to make tarator, a Turkish dip-cum-sauce for vegetables and fish. Hazelnuts have a sweet voice. Make them sing.