Pasta with Caramelized Onions and Walnuts

Seven years ago, we spent a few months in Italy. My lasting impression is that the entire country has been turned into an enormous food garden. I am sure this is a terrible loss for eco-diversity – even the woods feel groomed – and yet wherever we went, we found food in public places. Whether it was juniper berries growing in the local woods, figs on a hillside next to a public path, or chestnuts falling onto the main road, food grew everywhere.

My daughter loved it. At nine months, she had developed a passion for figs; while we rested under a favourite tree, admiring the distant towers of San Gimignano and dreaming of the gelati shop in its town square, she'd reach from the baby backpack, pick figs and messily gorge herself, smearing pink glop all over her face, her hair, her father and the backpack.

Our hosts certainly treated the world as a food garden. They grew, baked or cured most of their food, and gathered or hunted much of the rest, driving miles to the best chestnut groves. The local variety, which we gathered by the roadside and found to be astonishingly plump and succulent compared to the meagre specimens we had had in Melbourne, were disdained.

On the first day of hunting season we were shocked awake by gunfire at dawn. A few hours later, I walked into the garage and came eye to eye with a skinned hare almost as long as my body hanging from the rafters; it was dripping blood into a bucket. At least it wasn't a boar. While walking home through the woods one night by the light of the mobile phone, we came across a young boar. We froze while it stared at us appraisingly, took a few menacing steps, then turned its tusks and snuffled away. It made me look at restaurant menus a little differently; for such deliciousness, boar was astonishingly ugly.

And the walnuts! A small car park at the top end of town was shaded by a spreading walnut tree. In the autumn, we noticed nuts all over the ground, many pulverized by car tyres. We filled our pockets – delizioso!

If you need a reason to like early winter, perhaps walnuts could be it. At this time of year, the walnuts are delicious: soft, mealy, sweet and fragrant. I buy them in their shell; it's a natural preservative and keeps the nut from turning rancid. It takes about five minutes to crack a cupful – hardly a chore – and I do this sitting outside, holding each nut pointy-side down on a brick or old tile, tapping it once or twice with a hammer, then flicking away the shell to reveal the caramel coloured kernel. It gets easier with practice; you only need to obliterate one or two nuts to learn exactly how much force to send pounding down!

Despite the pasta, the following recipe is not particularly Italian. Instead, think of it as homage to happy memories, and the soft warm flavours of winter.

Pasta with Caramelised Onions and Walnuts - 400g brown onions, give or take - 1 cup freshly shelled walnuts - a walnut sized knob of unsalted butter - 2 tbs olive oil - 1 tsp dried thyme - 2 long stems fresh rosemary - ½ cup sherry - ½ cup water - 1 tbs walnut oil - ¼ cup double cream - 1 pack spaghetti or linguine (ie 1 lb / 500g white, 375g wholemeal if you're using the local and very filling Powlett's Hill) - freshly grated parmesan Warm a wide skillet and throw in the walnuts. Toast them in the skillet, tossing and shaking, for a few minutes until they are aromatic. Tip onto a plate, and wipe the pan. When the walnuts are cool, use your fingers to break them into small pieces. Slice the onions into thin half-moons. Warm the butter and oil in a wide pan with the thyme and one stem of rosemary. Add the onions and a very generous pinch of salt, and cook over medium heat, stirring from time to time, until the onions have caramelized. This will take 20 to 30 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a large pot of water to the boil. When the onions are completely soft and succulent, turn up the heat and add the sherry. Reduce until it is syrupy. Add half a cup of water and the walnut oil, and reduce the heat again. Add the pasta and the other stem of rosemary to the pasta pot; while the pasta is cooking, allow the sauce to reduce again. You may need to add a little more liquid to ensure it doesn't stick; if so, scoop ¼ cup of water out of the pasta pot and add it to the onions. You want to end up with a small amount of liquid in the pan, just enough to coat the noodles. When the pasta is cooked, drain it, discard the rosemary stalk, and tip the noodles into the onions. Add the cream, and gently mix until all is combined. Remove the other rosemary stalk and discard. Slide the noodles into a large serving bowl, and sprinkle with the walnuts. Serve immediately, and pass the parmesan. Adapted from a recipe in the indispensable Greens Cookbook by Deborah Madison. (Local: onions, walnuts, olive oil, rosemary, thyme, walnut oil, cream. Not local: pasta (this time), butter, sherry, parmesan.)

Cabbage with Chestnuts and Apples

Somewhere deep within me is a German harrumphing to get out. Whenever the weather turns cold, my thoughts turn to pork sausages, apples, cabbage, potatoes and chestnuts. This is odd, because we don't usually cook meat at our house, and 40% of my household won't eat it.

But every now and then, my German genes erupt. My great grandfather Gunter was born in Australia to German immigrants. He was a stern and arrogant man who owned a butcher's shop, and was deeply offended when his daughter, Constance, married below her station; she wed Bill the apprentice. Grandfather Gunter did his best to make their marriage a misery, and I am told he largely succeeded. His own marriages were nothing to smile at, either. He wed three times, each time to a Mary; the first two Marys predeceased him. My grandmother was the daughter of the middle Mary.

Grandpa Gunter loved to save a penny. He knew every bend and dip in the road between Katanning, his home town in the West Australian wheat belt, and Perth; and would coast for miles to save on fuel. He put the money he saved into a big house on the riverbank in Perth, and towards his annual holiday to Melbourne to watch the Cup.

And that's about all I know. It's not much of a heritage to go on, but it's enough – enough, at least, to justify the fact that every now and then I absolutely must grill sausages (pork for 60% of the family, soy for the sorry 40%); mash a heap of potatoes; stew some apples; and fry up some cabbage in some sort of porky-Germanic-homage.

This week was one of those times. In the fridge was a lovely local Savoy cabbage and chestnuts from a friend's farm. Inspired by a variation on a red cabbage-and-apple-thingy in Stephanie Alexander's Cook's Companion, and a Brussels-sprouts-and-chestnut thingy we love from Nigella Lawson's Feast, I thought we could make a Savoy-cabbage-and-apple-and-chestnut-thingy of our own. So I sautéed half a small Savoy cabbage in butter until it was glossy, threw in a couple of handfuls of cooked chestnuts and a dash of apple cider vinegar; and when the chestnuts were warm I mixed through some chunky apple sauce. With mashed potatoes, a good pork sausage, and rain falling steadily outside, dinner, and life, was perfekt!

Cabbage with Chestnuts and Apples - 300g fresh chestnuts in their shells, to make about 200g chestnut meats - walnut sized lump of butter - ½ small Savoy cabbage, shredded - 1 tbs apple cider vinegar, or, for a nuttier flavour, dry sherry - an apple, chopped and lightly stewed; or half a cup or so of chunky apple sauce First, prepare the chestnuts (These instructions are taken straight from the recipe for Chestnut and Celeriac Soup; if you know how to do it, skip to the double asterisk(**).) (I usually prepare the chestnuts a night or two ahead, after dinner, and store the chestnut meats in the refrigerator until I am ready to cook them.) Hold a chestnut flat side down on a sturdy chopping board. Place the tip of a sharp knife at the top of the nut, and lever it downwards so that the nut is bisected from top to bottom, but the knife does not cut through the shell on the flat side. Place the chestnut into a bowl. When all the chestnuts have been treated thus, place the bowl of chestnuts into the freezer for ten minutes. Bring a large pot of water to the boil. When the ten minutes is up, remove the chestnuts from the freezer and slide them into the rapidly boiling water. Boil for eight minutes, then turn the heat down low. Remove several chestnuts from the water with a slotted spoon, and quickly pop each nut half out of its shell and skin (or peel it). Continue until you have liberated all the nuts. Work fast, because as the nut cools the skin reattaches itself very firmly. If one or two chestnuts will not easily relinquish the inner skin, just sacrifice a little chestnut and slice it off rather than send yourself batty trying to peel it. Now the chestnuts are ready, and here you can pause for a day or two to suck your scalded fingers and recover, or, bless your soul, continue. **Warm a walnut sized knob of butter in a wide skillet. Add the cabbage and sauté briskly, stirring, until the cabbage goes glossy. Add a tablespoon or so of apple cider vinegar (or sherry), and cook until the liquid has reduced, mere seconds. Add the chestnuts and apple sauce, and warm through. Very nice by itself or with potatoes, but for the ultimate experience, add a good pork sausage! (Local: chestnuts, cabbage, apples, apple cider vinegar. Not always local: butter, sherry, salt.)

Tamarillo Cocktails

 

A couple of years ago, being interested in food gardens and pretty things, I planted a tamarillo. It’s an attractive small tree with enormous heart-shaped leaves, and grows quickly; within a year the tree cast a lovely dappled shade into our west-facing study. Although most tamarillos produce red fruit, we have an orange variety, and during autumn the fruit hang in pendulous clusters, swaying gently in the breeze.

Underneath the tamarillo tree, we planted gooseberries. Their leaf shape is a smaller echo of the tamarillo leaf, and the gorgeous golden fruit, tucked into paper lanterns, complement the colours of the tamarillo. Surrounding them is a sea of deep purple salvia; thus we have a regal assortment of jewel colours just outside our study window. This is one part of the garden that gives me enormous satisfaction: it's absolutely lovely to look at.

Just this week, however, it occurred to me that I should actually EAT the tamarillos. The usual way is to make chutney, but I'm not a big fan of any form of chutney, so that was off the cards. We've eaten some raw, cut open and scooped out with a teaspoon; and while they have an interestingly and complex flavour, they really are quite astringent. There is a limit to how much astringent fruit I will eat in a day.

With several hundred tamarillos on the tree, what was I to do? On reflection, I realised that, while I don't like to chomp on mountains of astringent fruit, I do like such drinks. I'm very fond of cranberry or grapefruit juice; I love a good sweet-tart flavour. So, having no juicer, I whizzed the tamarillo pulp in the food processor and then strained it into a glass.

Hey presto! a deliciously refreshing gloriously pretty autumnal drink. It tasted like a fruit cocktail, perhaps a tomato-passionfruit-guava combo. I drank it straight, and loved it. My kids found it a bit tart, so for them I mixed tamarillo with local apple juice, and that was sweet enough for them.

The next day, I combined tamarillo juice with soda water (made with my trusty soda stream). The fizz reacted with the pulp to form a thick foam, the texture reminiscent of an ice cream spider – lovely!

It all went to my head. Giddy with success, and reflecting that it had been so long since we'd made cocktails that I couldn't immediately remember where I'd put the martini glasses, I made drinkies. I like a cosmopolitan, with its cranberry citrus flavour. Like cranberries, tamarillos are clean and tart, so I substituted tamarillo for the cranberry juice and shook, shook, shook. The result was lively and not too sweet. Standing round our kitchen bench in old jeans, thick jumpers and fluffy boots, the kids' dishes piled up and our dinner waiting on the stove, my partner and I clinked glasses and pretended, just for a little while, that we were in elegant clothes somewhere far above the city, gazing down at a sea of twinkling lights and making glittering conversation. It was a very pleasant way to mark the end of the working week and solve the problems of the world; next time I may even dress up for the occasion!

Tamarillo Cosmopolitan - 150ml fresh tamarillo juice - 45ml vodka - 30ml Cointreau - juice of half a lime Place all ingredients into a shaker and fill with ice. Shake for 30 seconds. Strain into a martini glass, if you have one, and enjoy! (Local: tamarillo, lime. Not local: vodka, cointreau.)

 

Chocolate Chestnut Spread

 

My daughters are big fans of an overly sweetened nut paste, which has got me thinking. We sometimes buy a certain chocolate hazelnut spread ('half the fat of peanut butter') as a school holiday treat. Right now it's the middle of term, but I wondered if I could fiddle around with chestnuts and make a spread that contained no vegetable oil, and far more nuts than sugar, sort of a not-school-holiday treat.

Chestnuts are naturally mealy, so they're a great candidate for a spread-type-of-thing. Recipes for chestnut jam abound; but they usually call for one part sugar to one part chestnut meats, a ratio I find rather sickly. Instead, I warmed puréed chestnuts with cocoa and sugar, tweaking proportions until it tasted just right: rich, nutty, chocolately, and certainly not too sweet. It went down a treat at the after school munchies, and powered a good long session in the garden – including naked trampolining at 14°C, I might add – before nightfall.*

As I used the medium disc of the food mill, the paste is slightly textured; if you want a perfectly smooth paste, use the finest disc of the food mill and perhaps drizzle in a little unflavoured vegetable oil until it looks glossy.

Chocolate Chestnut Spread - 300g fresh chestnuts in their shells, to make about 200g chestnut meats - 4 tbs cocoa - 4 tbs sugar - 1 tsp vanilla - ½ tsp salt First, prepare the chestnuts. Hold a chestnut flat side down on a sturdy chopping board. Place the tip of a sharp knife at the top of the nut, and lever it downwards so that the nut is bisected from top to bottom, but the knife does not cut through the shell on the flat side. (This is far more straightforward than it sounds.) Place the chestnut into a bowl. When all the chestnuts have been treated thus, place the bowl of chestnuts into the freezer for ten minutes. Bring a pot of water to the boil. When the ten minutes is up, remove the chestnuts from the freezer and slide them into the rapidly boiling water. Boil for eight minutes. Turn the heat down as low as possible. Remove several chestnuts from the barely simmering water with a slotted spoon, and quickly pop each nut half out of its shell and skin (or peel it). Continue until you have liberated all the nuts. Work fast, because as the nut cools the skin reattaches itself very firmly. If one or two chestnuts will not easily relinquish their skin, just slice it off rather than send yourself batty trying to peel it. Now the chestnuts are ready, and here you can pause for a day or two to suck your scalded fingers and recover, or, bless your soul, continue. Place the cocoa, sugar, vanilla and salt into a saucepan. Slowly add ¾ cup hot water, stirring, to make a paste. Now push the chestnuts through the medium disc of a food mill directly into the pan. (If you don't have a food mill, purée them in a food processor or beat the crap out of them with a potato masher and scrape into the saucepan.) Turn the heat on low, and, using a wooden spoon, beat the chestnuts into the cocoa paste. Cook over low heat for ten minutes, stirring constantly, until all is amalgamated and the cocoa smells cooked. You may need to add a little more hot water. Scrape the paste into a 310g jam jar, using a small spatula to ease it in and to press out any air bubbles. There will be enough left in the saucepan for a couple of tester slices of bread. As it does not contain as much sugar as a normal jam, eat quickly, and store it in the fridge. *Don't panic. The trampolinist has a good decade to go before she hits puberty, and is too short to be seen over the fence. (Local: chestnuts. Not local but fair trade: cocoa, vanilla. Other: sugar, salt.)

 

 

Chestnut and Celeriac Soup

Ah, chestnuts! Ours come from Gembrook. The trees are tucked into a fold in the hill, below a slope of proteas. To the left, persimmons flame orange in the autumn light; near the house at the top of the hill, an old apple tree rustles with kids. We find a sunny spot to picnic, or flop in lime dappled shade to chat with old friends; then don our toughest boots and gloves and free the fallen chestnuts from their spiky casing.

The chestnut harvest is an annual event; but this year we couldn't make it. Instead a friend collected us a basketful of nuts for which I am thankful; and after a year of good rain, this was a bumper crop indeed, the nuts gloriously fat and swollen.

Not only are there now chestnuts in the fridge, but, at the organic shops at least, celeriac is cheaper than potatoes. Brisk mornings, cold nights, leaves changing colour: everything calls out 'Soup! Soup! Beautiful soup!' and I do too.

River Cafe Cook Book Green has an excellent recipe for chestnut and celeriac soup; but as is my wont, I have stripped back a few ingredients and made it a little more rough and ready. My version is perhaps not as precisely and delicately flavoured, but it is cheerfully delicious enough for me. Once the chestnuts are prepared, I can whip it together in a few minutes while kids are snoozing, then catch forty winks myself while the house slowly fills with the comforting smell of soup.

Two notes on chestnuts:

(1) Although they are usually sold unrefrigerated, they do go rancid and mouldy very quickly. As soon as you get them home, store them in the fridge until you need them.

(2) Most cooks recommend cutting a cross in the shell of the nut and boiling, which I have indeed done for many years. However, I have just tried the method described below and it is far more effective and forgiving on the fingers. Done this way, many nuts just pop out of their shell and skin; those that don't are quickly peeled. Even better, popping or peeling from a single cut rather than a cross means no pointy triangles to accidentally shove under your fingernails; thus no shooting pain; thus infinitely superior, indeed! A debt of gratitude to Jerry Traunfeld and his lovely book, The Herbal Kitchen.

Chestnut and Celeriac Soup - 600g fresh chestnuts in their shells, to make about 400g chestnut meats - walnut sized lump of butter - 1 brown onion, chopped - 2 celeriac, knobbly skin carved off and diced - 1 celery heart (this is the small inner cluster of a head of celery, rather more yellow than green), sliced finely from the base to the leaves - 2 bay leaves - ¼ cup dry sherry - olive oil and/or double cream - Parmesan - a hefty pinch of salt First, prepare the chestnuts. (I usually do this a night or two ahead, after dinner, and store the chestnut meats in the refrigerator until I am ready to cook them.) Hold a chestnut flat side down on a sturdy chopping board. Place the tip of a sharp knife at the top of the nut, and lever it downwards so that the nut is bisected from top to bottom, but the knife does not cut through the shell on the flat side. (This is far more straightforward than it sounds.) Place the chestnut into a bowl. When all the chestnuts have been treated thus, place the bowl of chestnuts into the freezer for ten minutes. Bring a large pot of water to the boil. When the ten minutes is up, remove the chestnuts from the freezer and slide them into the rapidly boiling water. Boil for eight minutes. Turn off the heat. Remove several chestnuts from the water with a slotted spoon, and quickly pop each nut half out of its shell and skin (or peel it). Continue until you have liberated all the nuts. Work fast, because as the nut cools the skin reattaches itself very firmly. If one or two chestnuts will not easily relinquish the inner skin, just sacrifice a little chestnut and slice it off rather than send yourself batty trying to peel it. Now the chestnuts are ready, and here you can pause for a day or two to suck your scalded fingers and recover, or, bless your soul, continue. Warm a good knob of butter in a soup pot. Add the onion and a pinch of salt, and sauté over medium heat for several minutes until the onion begins to soften. Add the celeriac and the celery, and stir well. Add the chestnuts and the bay leaf, stir again, and add the sherry. Let it reduce substantially, then barely cover the lot with boiling water. (If you have homemade chicken stock on hand, you can use it here instead of water. Just don't use the fake stuff because then the soup will taste of every other soup which is made with pseudo-stock, viz. metallic and salty; and in any case, it will make your tongue feel thick.) Season. Allow the soup to simmer until the celeriac is soft, about thirty minutes. Mash roughly with a potato masher, or pulse-chop half the soup in a food processor and return to the pot. This way you get some texture, and some soupy suspension. Taste for salt, undersalting rather than otherwise as the parmesan adds extra salt. To serve, ladle out a bowlful. Drizzle with some peppery olive oil and/or a spoonful of double cream, and sprinkle with freshly grated parmesan. (Local: chestnuts, onions, celeriac, bay leaves, olive oil, cream. Not local: butter, celery, sherry, parmesan, salt, pepper.)

Lentil and Celeriac Soup

 

My birthday: a day of groceries and laundry and nothing particularly special, so I decided to take my youngest out for lunch. Minutes before we left the house, however, her eyes went wide. 'Nappy!' she yelled urgently, 'Now'!'; then proceeded to fill it in spectacular fashion. As I cleaned her up, I asked how she was feeling. 'Not so good,' she said, 'my tummy funny'. Should we go out, I asked. 'Maybe not,' she said, then, one finger raised to the ceiling and a broad smile on her face she said, 'I have an idea: we could have birthday lunch at home!'.

Such a stroke of brilliance from a two year old is rather touching, all things considered; and we stayed in. I read a few more stories and built a marble run, then we sat down to lunch at, as always, the back table. Happily, I had made lentil soup earlier in the week, and we had some good cheese. As I sniffed my soup, I reflected that being home for lunch, while mundane, could still be very pleasant indeed.

When I had made the soup, I was looking for the autumnal feel of lentils without heaviness. Rather than a spicy thick red slurry, I had imagined pretty slate-green lentils, which hold their shape so well, piled into a light broth. I added carrots for their sweetness, and celeriac for its light clean flavour; and after the vegetables had sautéed for a while I threw in a generous slosh of martini bianco and let it reduce.

Martini bianco is a sweet Italian vermouth, herbaceous with a hint of vanilla. Vermouth is a mixer, but as I have no head for strong martinis I mix it into soup, stew and risotto instead! Here, the sweetly herbal flavour cut through any tendency to heaviness. The soup ended up gentle, fragrant, and soothing; everything I could have wanted in a week of nippy mornings, sunny days and exciting nappy events!

Lentil and Celeriac Soup - 1 brown onion - 2 carrots - 1 celeriac - ¾ cup green Puy style lentils - a bay leaf - a decent slosh vermouth, preferably Martini bianco - 4 cups or so water - olive oil - five or six stems of flat leaf parsley, chopped finely - a hefty pinch of salt Chop the onions finely. Warm the olive oil in a soup pot, and add the onions and a pinch of salt. Cook over medium heat while you chop the celeriac and carrots into small dice. When the onions are translucent, add the celeriac, carrots and bay leaf, and push them around with a wooden spoon until they are glossy. Add a slosh of vermouth (2 to 3 tablespoons), and let it reduce, which it will do almost immediately. Add the lentils and the water, and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to a gentle simmer, and let cook for half an hour. Taste for salt, remembering that lentils do need a good bit of salt, and cook for another ten to fifteen minutes, or until the lentils are just cooked. Puy lentils hold their shape; you are not looking for sludge. Serve with a good sprinkling of freshly chopped parsley, and a swirl of olive oil. This soup is delicious immediately. You can store it for a few days in the fridge, as did I, but the lentils absorb all the moisture and you will need to add more water each time you re-heat it, thus diluting the already light flavour; it was best on the first day. (Local: onions, celeriac, carrots, lentils, bay leaf, parsley, olive oil. Not local: vermouth, salt, pepper.)

Isaac Newton Apples

Late last year, some maths masters wrote about Isaac Newton, investigating and dismissing the myth that an apple fell on his head thus demonstrating the phenomenon of gravity to his observant mind. While the article was interesting enough, the mathematicians then claimed that the variety of apple named after the myth, the Isaac Newton, was awful to eat.

A few weeks ago, I was given a few bags of Isaac Newtons; and have discovered that the maths masters should stick to mathematics. While Isaac Newton apples are a coarse fleshed thick skinned rather uninteresting apple to eat raw, by God are they a cooking apple! When cooked, the flesh collapses and develops the deep scent of cloves. They are the finest cooking apple I have tasted, the sort which leave my family hanging around the stove desperately begging for another bowlful.