Sitting in the jury assembly room waiting for “Panel 7” to be called, I really haven’t much better to do then write about nuts. My wife adores nuts. Any dish can be enhanced by their flesh. She grooves on the taste and especially their texture. It’s for these exact reasons that Harlock does not like nuts. My wife and he are 180º out of phase. I myself sit somewhere near the perpendicular. On the whole, I can take nuts or leave them. Sometimes they get in the way of my enjoyment of otherwise orgasmic brownies. Other times they add exactly the right crunch and tang to an exotic salad. I’ve long believed that a nut has to be judged by its own merits, so here are my opinions on the matter:
Hazelnuts (a.k.a. “filberts”)—These are my choice for good old standby, work-a-day nuts. They submit easily and predictably to the ministrations of a nut cracker. The fibrous membrane peels easily from the meat. Finally, the meat itself satisfies with a tooth-pleasing medium crunch and a distinct, musky-sweet nut flavor. Europe has a longstanding love affair with the hazelnut. Everything is flavored, covered, or stuffed with hazelnut goop. One of the more notorious hazelnut concoctions is that noxious chocolate sludge called Nutella. This slimy mix of fat, nuts, sugar, and cocoa is a sad, stodgy European stand-in for peanut butter. Every time I break open a hazelnut I think of the Elizabethan and Jacobean actors who had to project their lines over the din of cracking hazelnuts in the galleries. The only thing I have to say against the noble hazelnut is that I run into a rancid specimen more often than any other nut. It can take a half hour or more to rid my mouth of the sour taste.
Walnuts—As a child I was allergic to walnuts. More than a few bites would result in a crippling case of heartburn. This was a shock and a disappointment because walnuts were one of my dad’s favorite nuts. Sometimes a bowl of mixed nuts would sit next to our hearth, waiting for a roaring fire to gather the family for a nut cracking fest. Sometimes, there’d just be walnuts and then I’d be bummed. Over the years, my allergy has diminished to the point that I’m now able to appreciate walnuts like never before. Their delicate crunch and oily, almost acrid taste brings certain chocolate chip cookies to the next level. A favorite salad of spinach, endive, strawberries, and raspberry vinegar just wouldn’t be the same without walnuts. But I still don’t groove on straight walnuts. Extracting the fragile nutmeat from the shell is a pain, they leave my teeth feeling rough and gritty, and every once in a while a particularly harsh walnut makes my throat clench. Still, walnuts deserve their place in the nut pantheon.
Pistachios—I’ve gathered the majority of my experience with these strange nuts since I’ve been married. I’d always only known the red-dyed variety. Piles of red clam-looking “nuts” never really interested me. Pistachio ice cream looked too much like frozen puke. Then I learned that one of my wife’s favorite “foods” required pistachio pudding. The stuff is called Watergate salad and it’s basically a goopy green ambrosia salad, so it looks a lot like unfrozen puke. My point is that I like pistachios now. Their bright green cast doesn’t put me off. I haven’t had a bad pistachio yet. They have a soft crunch and a rich, creamy nut taste.
I think that’s going to do it for this installment, although I have yet to write about the charms of pine nuts, Brazil nuts, peanuts, pecans, chestnuts, cashews, almonds, and macadamia nuts.
Pakeha