Good Food Blog
Nuts to autumn!
Posted at 3:50PM, 06 November 2009 by Mary Cadogan - Food writer
I'm really lucky to have walnut and hazelnut trees in my garden and this year the crop has been the best yet. Trouble is that the garden has now become a hard hat area. The merest breath of wind and nuts come raining down, and if you happen to be underneath, it can be quite painful. And the walnuts this year are as big as golf balls and almost as hard.
The garden has now become a hard hat area
But as you probably know by now, I find free food impossible to resist. So every morning you'll find me inching my way around the area under the trees on my kneeling mat, filling my basket with precious nuts. These are then spread out in shallow wooden boxes that once held apples or pears in the market, and left until December to dry out. If I don't do this, the nuts won't keep and the moisture in them will turn them mouldy.
On a recent trip to our nearby nut mill, the delightful and beautiful owner Françoise tantalisingly informed me that if I cracked a minimum of 5kg of nuts she would turn them into nut oil for me. And then of course the dry cake of ground nuts that's left after the oil is extracted can be put through the grinding stone to be made into nut flour for use in cakes and biscuits. Oh joy!
I've weighed 5kg of hazelnuts into a box and I have to tell you it's a huge amount. Nut trees like the climate in the Charente and in the past, and probably to this day, families would spend many winter nights sitting round the kitchen table cracking nuts to be turned into oil to sell at the markets and use in their cooking.
I'm so sorely tempted to give it a go, especially as the thought of using my own oil in our cook school and selling small bottles in our little shop (OK, it's only a dresser really but at the moment it's brimming with produce) along with my homemade jams and chutneys is so very appealing. And if I rope my husband and friends in to help with the task, throwing in the incentive of a glass of wine or two, maybe it's do-able. In the meantime I'm making nut cakes, nut biscuits, adding them to tagines and pasta dishes, making sugared nuts to nibble in front of the telly and adding them to my breakfast muesli.
If anyone has any other good ideas, do share them - I've only got about 15kg to get through!
Comments
Your binder
Sign up or sign in to receive a £40 wine voucher, and to save, rate and comment on recipes. Plus, get our newsletter.
Your binder
Here are three other great reasons to sign up:
- You get an online binder, where you can store all your favourite recipes and create menus.
Search Good Food
Categories
Archive
Advertiser Links
Tried and tested 
Flag as inappropriate
Please let us know your name and the reason you find the above comment inappropriate.
Flag as inappropriate
Please let us know your name and the reason you find the above comment inappropriate.