A few days ago, I drove home from a friend’s with presents of the best kind: nets of walnuts, hazelnuts and chestnuts slumped on the backseat, like chubby, sleeping grandchildren.
Today, I’ll make use of two of them.
At my feet, a snoring, farting dog.
Offering yet more evidence of Darwin’s theories, he has grown capable of separating the tablet he takes for his slipped disc from the shroud of cheese within which it is presented. An hour or two later, it is not unusual to find a pill - they look like the Tic Tacs of my childhood - secreted in his moustache. Happily, he appears temporarily fooled by a new edible wrapper: a piece of apple served perfectly this morning, though I’m not sure of my chances for this afternoon’s medication.
He’s bored. No walks allowed, and little freedom to move around as his back legs don’t allow him to climb stairs. I carry him from floor to floor to be with one of us; he rests better in company.
Yesterday the sun shone warm and good - the lack of rain felt like a neighbour’s strimmer being finally turned off; today, it’s throwing it down again. I’m stopping in with the hound.
In the search for warmth and heartiness, I make soup using some of the chestnuts and a Black Futsu squash, with its deep orange, sweet yet nutty flesh.
While the squash roasts, I’m making hazelnut vodka, a pleasure I first encountered a decade ago thanks to the brilliant forager Liz Knight. Since then, frangelico - an Italian hazelnut liqueur that’s rather heavy on the sweetness, but has its uses - has caught my attention, but nothing quite touches a hazelnut vodka made yourself, sugar and spices tweaked to suit.
The dog lifts his head once in a while to snaffle errant hazelnuts that bounce from the table as they’re cracked. He’s doing ok from it.
He doesn’t get so much luck from the chestnuts: the easiest way to tackle them is to cut a slit in each, roast them on a tray for 20-25 minutes, cover them with a tea towel so they steam a little, then peel them when just cool enough to be handled. Their skins grip on tightly to the flesh if they cool too much; if that happens, pop them back in the oven for a couple of minutes. As a guide, it’s usual for unshelled, uncooked chestnuts to weigh twice that of them processed, so 400g fresh chestnuts gave me the 200g of roasted, peeled nuts I needed for the soup.