Victoria Cosford
Today, I’m baking using Ian MacRae’s Macadamia Biscuits receipe. I’m using the whole, fabulously fresh, roasted buttery macadamia nuts and folding them through a very buttery batter, and I know once I eat one, I may never stop.
Are macadamia nuts the best nuts? Ian, owner of Nudgel Nuts, and I are of the same mind here; Ian has been farming them for 26 years, and his passion remains undiminished, even though the long-time founder of the Mullumbimby Farmers Market, along with his wife Leone, have had the occasional break from them owing to crop problems or ill health.
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’ he explains as one smartly dressed woman deliberates over dark or milk. These are the only product processed away from the farm – Lucia Chocolates at Southport ‘enrobe’ the nuts; a generous one-third nut to two-thirds chocolate. Everything else, from the picking to the dehusking, cracking and roasting, is done on-site. Hence that extraordinary freshness!
I asked Ian to share a little-known fact about macadamias. He replied that there are more than twelve varieties, he himself growing eight, distinguished by things like differing leaves, nut sizes and 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! (See the recipe on the website.)
Nudgel Nuts are at Mullumbimby Farmers Markets on Fridays from 7–11am.
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