Cradock – To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
The verse, from the book of Ecclesiastes (no, this isn’t going to be a sermon), was the core of a folk song penned by Pete Seeger in the late 1950s and made broadly famous in the 1960s by American folk rock band The Byrds.
Back in South Africa, in the 1960s, the lyric got The Byrds into all sorts of trouble when the apartheid hawks got wind of it, screwed up their eyes, sharpened their beaks and decreed the song non grata. Just as they had the entire catalogue of The Beatles when John Lennon declared the band more famous than Jesus Christ. He might have been simply stating a fact, but to those who would choose what our eyes can see and our ears can hear in those verkrampte times, this was heresy.
Such people believe themselves to be omniscient but to the rest of us they’re just nuts.
Back in the kitchen, it seems that to everything there is indeed a season, even for nuts. I had never thought of nuts as having a season. Some of the human varieties seem to come out of hibernation at will to spew their mad decrees and send off posses to annihilate whoever is particularly non grata that day, but the ones that grow on trees seemed perennially available to me.
But now that I live in a part of the world where nuts are a local crop, it has become clear. I have been making pecan nut tarts since November, regularly, and have suddenly been caught short, unexpectedly, with the news that they’re out of season.
I suppose if I’d thought about it, it would have been obvious. But having only bought them from supermarkets or market stalls in the past there’d never been any reason to think about it. So I find myself in a position where the only pecans available are those branded 100g packets alongside the peanuts and raisins in the shops. And now that I’ve had months of using pecans farmed outside of Cradock, that’s not going to cut it any more.
But, all ain’t lost, because walnuts are still in season, and I’d been given a bag of lovely crisp ones that I’d been keeping in the freezer.
Nuts can come straight out of the freezer and into a hot, dry frying pan, to be toasted over a moderate heat for two or three minutes, tossing them all the while. Take them off the heat before the pan starts smoking, and before the nuts go too dark. Salt them and you’re away.
This week I was planning to make a brace of pecan pies. But I did have those walnuts and suddenly remembered the little bottle of hazelnut syrup I’ve had for ages. Ping. Use hazelnut syrup instead of some of the golden syrup in the pecan recipe and you’d have a walnut and hazelnut tart. Voila.
Walnut and hazelnut tart
2 packets puff pastry (I much prefer the Today brand, not Alibaba which is brownish and has an odd texture)
2 cups golden syrup plus 1 cup hazelnut syrup (but use 3 cups golden if you can’t find hazelnut – I had bought mine at Woolies)
¼ cup butter
1 cup caramel or muscovado sugar
2 Tbs rum or brandy
4 jumbo eggs, whisked
1 tsp vanilla essence
½ tsp salt
2 cups walnuts, chopped
Flour a clean, hard surface and roll out the room-temperature pastry. Grease or spray a ceramic or glass tart dish and line with a round of pastry, crimping the edges with your fingers. Prick the base about 15 times and place in the fridge for 20 minutes.
Into a deep saucepan, pour the golden syrup and hazelnut syrup and add the butter, sugar and rum or brandy. Bring to a simmer on a moderate heat, stirring. When it starts to foam, keep stirring for one minute making sure it does not boil over, which it will try very hard to do.
Leave the sauce off the stove to return to room temperature, at least 2 minutes. This is to avoid the egg scrambling when you fold it in.
Whisk the eggs and fold into the sauce, then add the salt and vanilla and fold in the chopped walnuts.
Pour into the tart dishes and bake in an oven pre-heated to 180°C for about 30 to 35 minutes or until the pastry is lightly golden but not too dark.
Remove and place dishes on a wire rack to cool. Serve chilled or at room temperature with whipped cream infused with vanilla or a little of the hazelnut syrup.
Weekend Argus