LANGHE

Green whips and Franco’s torta di nocciole

When we were kids, my sister and I planted a hazelnut each in little terracotta pots. We didn’t really think anything would happen with them yet we assiduously watered them daily and moved them around the house to sit in pockets of sun where it fell.

What seemed like an eternity later, we saw green shoots pushing up from one of the pots. The excitment was intense. This was no mustard cress grown in an eggshell, no pansy to see us through the winter, this was an ACTUAL TREE. We couldn’t believe it and begged our parents to plant them outside.

Our mother, a country girl from a forest, told us we couldn’t plant it outside in case its roots damaged the house foundations. These fears were quite real in the 70s, but she capitulated to our dad, a city boy who had moved to the more rural West Country after his house got flattened in the Coventry blitz and really didn’t know much about plants or forests. We planted the tiny tree in a bed near the kitchen window and watched over it like hawks.

After a while, it grew quite strong and sturdy and, confident in its ability to survive, we forgot about it. In fact we all forgot about it until one day we noticed the thin and slender branches tapping on the kitchen window, and we had to do an emergency evacuation of it to the very forest our mother had grown up in, where we imagined it growing tall and strong and feeding squirrels for evermore.

Years later, living in Costabella with my own family, we had a row of hazelnut trees running along the back of our house. I remembered my first experience of a hazelnut tree and loved watching them grow, their thin tapers reaching up to the bathroom window and casting a green glow whilst bathing. I thought the young energetic growth was beautiful, and needed. I also knew nothing about trees.

One day our neighbour came round. An old man, brown as a nut from a lifetime spent farming, he held in his hand a torta di nocciole. He knew I liked cooking and he cut me a slice on the sunblistered table in our front garden. As we waited for the very strong espresso that he liked to brew, he broke off some crumbs of the cake and held them out to me to taste. If you have not had the pleasure of eating Piedmontese hazelnuts then I cannot describe them here. These nuts are prized across the world, they are expensive, about 7 euros a kilo, small, shiney, intense. They are roasted to bring out their flavour and one hazelnut farmer I met swore we could taste the sea in his harvest due to the wind sweeping up the valley from the nearby Mediterranean. Who was i to argue? I thought I could too.

Anyway, my neighbour asked me if I would like to learn how to make this cake. Of course I would. Come then, he said, and taking my hand, led me round to the back of my house where our elegant, thin and very tall hazel trees were waving in the breeze.

If you want to make this cake, you must first be able to grow hazelnuts he said. You will never get a crop from these, they are very neglected. They are like thin green whips, no substance. I felt so ashamed! in my ignorance, I had let my trees do their own thing, a particular trait of mine, and in doing so had stripped them of any strength and vitality needed to produce a single nut.

He was gracious in his admonishment. He grew a grove of his own, he told me, a few fields over, somewhere I had not walked yet. He would take me to see it, but first we had work to do.

His old hands, gnarled with arthiritis, held a sythe and quickly sliced through all my nut trees hard earned growth. A pile of spindly branches soon stacked high next to us and the children took them to the barn, where they would dry out to become good kindling.

The back of my house now exposed and my trees reduced to knubs, I could have cried. Coraggio, he said. Courage. Be brave. They are like children. You need to help them to be strong, not leave them to grow wild. I’m not sure I agreed with his analogy, being the proud mother of completely feral and world schooled children, but sure enough, after a couple more seasons under his tutelage, my hazel trees did grow to resemble the short, bushy trees in the groves that became a familiar and beautiful sight across the Piedmontese hills. Though I never got enough nuts to make the tart, he did indeed teach me how to make it so he must have been pleased with my efforts. And that was enough for me.

Franko’s torta di nocciola

If you don’t have your own hazelnut grove, or indeed have neglected your own trees, you can buy Piedmontese hazelnuts. You can buy them ready roasted, but why deny yourself the pleasure of roasting and skinning nuts, the hot heady fragrance perfuming your kitchen and transporting you to the golden light of Franco and Dominica’s kitchen and the delights of a wood burning stove.

Ingredients

Only 3 in this simple cake, so the hazelnuts really are the star of the show.

400g hazelnuts, skin on

4 eggs, separated

200g caster sugar

Method

Put a couple of small, seasoned hazel logs from last years felling into the already gently glowing embers of your woodburning oven. You are aiming to get the oven up to 160c or gas mark 3. Dont cry over your chopped trees - they are now keeping you warm and feeding you.

On the top of the oven, lay a cast iron skillet and leave it to warm through. Or, use a frying pan on a medium heat. Toss your langhe hazelnuts onto the warmed pan, and keeping the pan moving to prevent them catching, toast them until the oakey, heady aroma threatenss to overpower you. Remove from heat and tip onto a clean tea towel. Gather up the cloth and rub gently to remove the toasted skins. You will be left with creamy nuggets of hazelnuts, glistening and tempting. Have a couple, its a cooks perk.

Once cooled, chop very finely. Do not overchop, the texture of the finished cake should be definatly, resolutely, nutty.

Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until the colour of autumn

Whisk the egg whites until pillowy and white, like snow as the Italians say. You are aiming for the soft peak stage.

Fold in a third of the pillowy egg whites into the golden eggs and sugar. Fold in carefully.

Add the rest of the egg white and the chopped hazelnuts and continue to fold carefully in.

Grease or line with parchment a baking tin about 20cm across….make sure it fits into your oven, these woodburners have small doors.

Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for about 40 mins or until set. It will be a deep nutty gold when done and there will be enough time whilst its baking to set a mocha pot of espresso on the stove, to enjoy hot and steaming with the warm cake.

Alternatively, if you can bear to, save some to have cold for breakfast in the best Piedmontese tradition.