‘This will cane them’ I always used to think when I came across nuts as a young boy.
Acorns were always a plenty in autumn growing up in Tasmania. They are not natives, but a mostly adopted backdrop by our forefathers. Brought over to help remind early settlers of the mother land back in England.
Having pocket full of acorns, and an accurate throwing arm was a great defense mechanism growing up.
Bigger kids are always going to pick shit with smaller kids, and adults simply told us to deal with it back in the late eighties, and early nineties. So we did.
Bigger kids certainly thought twice about giving you grief after they felt the sting of an acorn across their face. In my adventures anyways.
In kitchen life I have never got the opportunity to indulge in acorns. One of their relatives, in hazelnuts, I certainly have though.
Those annoying nuts that have a fine skin, yet not fine enough that you can just eat em.
Once you have shattered a hazelnuts outer shell to reveal its sweet nutty centre, you then have to peel off another more finite coating.
This task is best performed by lightly roasting the nut/s, then rolling them around in a tea towel until the skin flakes off.
Bugger that I say, just hit these guys up here, they’ll hook you up- Hazelbrae hazelnuts.
Hazelnuts historically were symbols of good luck and fertility. Yet many cultures hold their own mythological and religious ties to hazelnuts
Proof of Hazelnut production can be dated back as far as 10,000 bc, in the mesolithic period.
China is known to have cultivated the mighty Hazelnut around 3,000 years ago. The Chinese also considered hazelnuts as one of the 5 sacred fruits bestowed by God upon our great species.
An Iranian version of the Uyghur Epic accounts that: “At the confluence of the Tuğla and Selenga rivers, a mountain between a beech tree and a hazelnut tree swelled and split. Then five infants came out of it.”
It is not known the specific history of hazelnuts in Australia, yet nursery catalogues from the 1840s mention hazelnut planting material available for purchase.
One of Tasmania’s larger hazelnut attractions is Hazelbrae hazelnuts, located at Hagley in the central north of the state.
They offer many hazelnut delicacies, including cooked and peeled nuts, nut butter, ground nuts, and nut oil.
Autumn is Hazelnut picking time, you can get out and about and pick as many fresh fallen hazelnuts as you like for 10 bucks out at Hazelbrae.
My son and I headed out the for a look when the annual tasting event was on around the start of May. Sunday the 16th to be specific.
The event was being held to highlight the North-west Tasmanian tasting train. Check it out @tastingtrail
We met a few of the folks on site, I got my lad a couple of chocolate coated samples, then we headed into the orchard with a 10 litre relish bucket I got from work to stock up on freshly fallen Hazelnuts.
He didn’t want a bar of bending over, on his knees, picking through the foliage in order to help get me some cheap hazelnuts.
He did a few ear wigs for the lizard vivarium though.
$10 to fill the bucket they said. Henry just said ‘get some from the shop dad, I wanna go play’.
Fair enough too. I had done kettle bells on the Friday, and my squat game was struggling.
We filled half the bucket, I got a red bull from the shop, and chasies it was for the next half an hour or so.
I had been researching ‘Buche de noel’ as part of some play time with chocolate, and as menu item for work, and apparently hazelnuts were a traditional accompaniment to this classic European dessert.
Buche de noel is a traditional European dessert that drew inspiration from a tradition where people burnt whole logs in their lounge rooms over the cold, Christmas and festive seasons.
It makes sense. Hazelnuts do their thing heading in winter, so during the time of the year when having whole logs on the fire to keep warm was the norm, hazelnuts would have been plentiful in order to help create a classic dish like the Buche de noel.
Check out my Buche de noel’ recipe here.
Northern Tasmania’s tasting trail is choc-a-block with little family run food businesses. And these place are absolutely smeshing it up at all types of awards and competitions.
Hagley is such a great area too. With the Hagley farm school teaching local children all the bits and pieces that come with life on a farm.
And with all the nuts, pine cones, and other projectile type objects lying around, I bet the local bullies get their cheeks stung into submission as swiftly as the resident hawks cruise about the area looking for lunch.
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References:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelnut
Check this out below if you want something truly hardcore to have a play with at home with your freshly smeshed hazelnuts.
Tales of a Tassie Chef 