Instructions
The best thing about our awkward teenage years is that they eventually come to an end.
At that point we embark upon our awkward adult years. Sorry kids, but it’s true. Life doesn’t get easier, it’s just that the wallpaper changes.
As a hormonally cantankerous teenager I found most things pretty galling – school, chores, siblings, the colour yellow. You know, just the normal list. But there was one thing for which I reserved a special degree of antagonism. Dad’s pistachio obsession.
Night after night he’d sit down to a bowl of nuts and crack them one at a time. Crack, crack, slurp. Crack, crack, slurp. It was a ritual that seemed to last indefinitely, certainly interminably! There was no escape from that cracking sound.
So imagine my surprise when I recently visited a pistachio farm at Northam, east of Perth, just as the nuts (actually fruit to be precise) were ripening on the trees. It was like being a teenager all over again: I was surrounded by the same endless cracking.
You see, when pistachios finish ripening they undergo a process called dehiscence where the closed shell cracks open with a loud snap. The nuts’ relative water content drops and drops, until the shell is stretched beyond its means. At that point the shell splits loudly exposing the edible seed within.
The trees cracked, our cameraman munched the nuts, and the farmer slurped his cola. Crack, crack, slurp!
Aaaaarrrrgh!
Of course, I’ve grown more patient in the intervening years, and I even found ways to love the pistachio. It’s so very user-friendly in the kitchen. Icecream, pate, baklava, mortadella. All are made more special and more delicious with the addition of pistachios. Especially right now as local nuts come into season. Store nuts airtight, never in the fridge, and refresh them in a low temperature oven if they stale.
Pistachios add colour, flavour, texture and shape to a meal, stimulating all of your senses. That’s right, all of them. Even your ears!
Nougat