I can’t think of a better excuse than the weather forecast to stay inside today.

Gone is the idea of hunting down a Mexican Sage plant (Salvia leucantha) for a sheltered space in a garden bed. Banished, too, is the plan to rake up fallen leaves and ditto the notion of planting out a bucketful of succulents, culled from an overcrowded bed.

Today is shaping up to be the perfect lazy Sunday: cold and wet, with winds exceeding gale-force. Definitely one for hunkering down in front of the blazing wood heater.

Yesterday, some dear friends gave us a large bag of chestnuts which will put all that heat to even better use than just toasting our toes.

The aroma of roasting chestnuts is utterly wonderful and, in my opinion, second only to that of brewing coffee or baking bread. Why has nobody produced scented candles that fill the room with those heart-warming fragrances?

But perhaps they have and I lead far too sheltered a life to know about them.

At the same time as the chestnuts are roasting, I’ll catch up with the news in the weekend’s papers. Multi-tasking doesn’t get any better than that.

I’ve long been a fan of chestnuts. In London, on bleak and dark evenings after work, I’d buy a bag of the steaming, roasted nuts from a cheery vendor on Oxford Street. The nuts were always too hot to eat straight away but allowing them to cool gave me time to savour their tantalising aroma until I could quickly scoff them while sitting comfortably on the top deck of the bus.

During our first Autumn here, we’d see clusters of people beneath trees that line the road into town. They seemed to be collecting something… but what? When we stopped to investigate, we found a few prickly-shelled fruit lying on the ground. Based on photos I’d seen, I guessed they were chestnuts.

One Autumn years ago, while holidaying on the south coast of New South Wales, we bought some chestnuts to roast in the oven of our holiday flat. Clueless, I loaded them into an oven tray and waited while they cooked. 

The ensuing explosions left the oven covered in a stubbornly baked-on mess of chestnut flesh which I was still trying to scrape off days later. To avoid any explosions in the fire or oven, you need to pierce the shell to reduce the pressure that builds up during cooking.

According to Stephanie Alexander in The Cook’s Companion, freshly picked chestnuts need to be dried to reduce their moisture content and to reduce the risk of their becoming mouldy. Spread them out in the sun until they’re completely dry, or simply rub them dry with a cloth before storing them.

To score the shell I use a craft scalpel, which you can find in an art supply shop or a newsagent’s. I place the nut on a board to score it safely. There’s nothing worse than trying to staunch heavy bleeding from a nasty cut just as you’re primed to enjoy yourself.

Roast the chestnuts at 180ºC, or barbeque them for about 20 minutes. After removing them from the heat, wrap the nuts in a tea towel for about five minutes before peeling. There are two sets of skin to be removed: the outer shell and the thinner, inner skin. Sprinkle the chestnuts lightly with salt and savour warm.

I found this recipe for a chestnut cake in The Food of Italy, by Claudia Roden. As it calls for five eggs, it’s the type of cake that would be perfect if you keep chooks. And with an ingredient such as cognac, it’s probably more of a special-occasion cake than your everyday slice-with-a-cuppa variety.

My partner plans to make it, bless him, once the weather calms down a little and it’s safe to venture to the shops without arboreal detritus hampering our journey:

TORTA DI CASTAGNE

Chestnut Cake
500g chestnuts
300ml milk
250g sugar
100g blanched almonds or walnuts, finely chopped
5 eggs
100g butter, softened
Grated peel of 1 lemon
100g bitter or dark chocolate, grated
2-3 tablespoons of Strega or cognac
A little flour

1. Make a long slit on the flat side of each chestnut and put them under the grill, turning them over to brown on both sides.
2. Peel them while still hot.
3. Simmer chestnuts in enough milk to cover for about 15 minutes till soft. Drain and mash to a pulp in a food processor.
4. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar.
5. Add the butter (keep aside a knob to grease the cake tin), chestnuts and almonds or walnuts, grated lemon peel, chocolate and Strega or cognac, and stir thoroughly.
6. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and pour into a buttered and floured 27cm cake tin.
7. Bake in a 180ºC oven (gas mark 4) for about 50-60 minutes. Turn out and serve cold.

Of course, if fresh chestnuts aren’t available you could use chestnut purée. In that case, ignore the first three steps.

Twenty years ago, chestnuts were quite a scarce commodity in Australia, even in the cooler parts of the country. These days there are so many producers that they’ve formed a grower’s organisation called Chestnuts Australia, on whose website you can find out just about anything you wish to know about these increasingly popular nuts. 

By the way, I’ve just realised that I didn’t include chocolate in that list of heart-warming aromas, although I have even seen chocolate-scented candles in shops around town. Any enterprising candle-makers out there: I reckon there’s definitely a niche for roasted-chestnut, brewed-coffee and freshly-baked varieties.

Now I’m off to do some serious multi-tasking in front of the fire.