Today, with Ian McRae’s nuts, I’m baking his Macadamia Biscuits. I’m using the whole, fabulously fresh, roasted buttery nuts and folding them through a very buttery batter, and I know once I start eating one I may never stop
Are macadamia nuts the best nuts? Nudgel Nuts’ Ian and I are of the same mind here, and Ian has been farming them for 26 years. A long-time founder of the Mullumbimby Farmers’ Market along with his wife Leone, he’s had the occasional break from them – crop problems, ill health – but his passion remains undiminished .
There’s a steady stream of customers as we chat, although Ian has noticed that people, given the current economic climate, are buying smaller quantities. ‘Macadamias are a luxury’, he says. The roasted ones are the best sellers (‘they’re the crunchiest’, he says), but there’s a big demand for the chocolate-coated ones too, one smartly dressed woman deliberating over dark or milk. These are the only product processed away from the farm – Lucia Chocolates at Southport enrobe the nuts, a generous third nut to two-thirds chocolate – everything else, from the picking to the dehusking, cracking and roasting, is done onsite. Hence that extraordinary freshness!
What’s a little-known fact about macadamias? I ask Ian. He replies that there are over twelve varieties, he himself growing eight, distinguished by things like differing leaves, nut sizes, thickness of shells. I’m disappointed, however, by their prosaic names – like A4’s and 741’s and A16’s!
How Ian likes to use the nuts in cooking is to add macadamia sprinkles to panko crumbs and cheese then roll flattened pork schnitzels in the coating before frying – an idea I intend to try. As for those biscuits, Ian says he used to sell up to 300 a week at the markets! Recipe on the website.
Nudgel Nuts are at Mullumbimby on Fridays from 7 – 11am
Victoria Cosford
