Hazelnut Biancomangiare

I catered a private dinner recently and was looking for a very low fat dessert to suit a person's dietary needs. It came upon me - grazie, time spent living in Italy! - to try making a biancomangiare with Tasmanian ingredients. A bee-unco-mun-JAR-ay is the Italian version of a blancmange, a semi-soft pudding usually made with nut milk. Making the nut milk is probably the more involved bit of the process. I was quite happy with the end result, which in this case had a little rose fragrance to balance the earthiness of the nuts.
​Ingredients

• 1/2 cup hazelnuts
• 1 Tbs potato (or corn) starch
• 2 Tbs raw sugar
• 1/2 tsp agar powder
• 1/2 tsp rose water

Method

1. Soak the 1/2 cup of hazelnuts overnight, then drain.
2. Put the soaked hazelnuts in a blender with 2 cups of water. Blend vigorously until you have a smooth slurry. Strain the slurry through a cloth so you remove the nut solids*. Keep the milk, which should end up being about 500ml.
3. Measure the 1 Tbs potato starch. 2 Tbs raw sugar and 1/2 tsp agar powder into a medium saucepan. Add a little of the hazelnut milk and stir to mix.
4. Add the rest of the 500ml hazelnut milk and gently warm the mixture, stirring regularly. Add the 1/2 tsp of rose water.
5. As soon as there are signs of boil bubbles IMMEDIATELY remove the saucepan from the heat. Pour into 4 moulds or dessert cups and cool for an hour a least before serving.

Serve with a garnish of rose petals and whole hazelnuts on top. In some of the process photos you can see I also added rose petals into the mixture during one of the trials. In the end I felt the texture was slightly odd and I didn't put rose petals into the final version.
*Note: the nut solids, generically know as okara, can be used for a few different things. Adding them to smoothies is probably the easiest thing to do with them. Okara can also be used for baking, energy balls, burgers and so on.
Time: overnight soaking, 20 mins prep, plus cooling time, 
Serves: 4
Gluten-free & nut free: yes, and no!
Low-fat: yes
Variations:​ try making different nut milks and combine with other classic dessert flavours like cinnamon, vanilla, lemon, chocolate, etc.