By Tania Phillips
Ballandean Estate Winemaking pioneer Angelo Puglisi is a local legend around the Granite Belt so it’s little surprise he’d be involved in a community event like Snowflakes in Stanthorpe – also being a bit of a savvy customer it’s also no surprise he’d find one of the warmest places to be during the three-day festival.
When you think colder weather it’s hard not to think warm food and one of those foods most synonymous with snow are Chestnuts. So, you probably couldn’t have Snowflakes In Stanthorpe without Chestnuts and that’s where you’ll find Angelo and his friends.
He’s pretty humble when you call him “chestnut roaster extraordinaire”.
“Well, I’ve done it a few times,” he chuckles warmly.
“If I told you what the secret is to a good chestnut you’d take my job,” he jokes before imparting his chestnut roasting wisdom.
“” All it takes is patients and determination to make sure that they get cooked correctly.
“You just have to wait until they start to peel the skin off and split a little bit. You’ve got to always cut them because if you don’t do that they just pop.
“It’s a bit like popcorn, if they get too hot, they just pop so you split the skin before you put them into the roasting situation.
“And then it depends on how you want to do them, the old people use to have an old frypan that wasn’t in use too much anymore, drill a few holes in the bottom and sit it on top of a nice fire. They have to get really hot, wait ‘til the skin gets a little bit black, keep on shaking them so they don’t burn on the one side.”
He said the one big mistake that most people made was to leave them on one-side for too long and that side becomes overcooked and hard like a rock.
“You want them to soften up inside – that’s all it is, they soften up inside and they’re great to eat,” Angelo explained.
“I’ve seen them all over the world – different places – in Japan, well not only Japan all over France and even all over Europe they do the same thing – there is somebody sitting on the street corner with a drum, a fire drum and a frypan or some sort of container sitting on top and roasting away.
“You go there, they serve them to you nice and hot in a little paper cone or a paper bag, you put it in your pocket, it keeps your pocket warm, your hands warm. You put your hands in your pocket and you peel them without even looking at them.
“They smell pretty good; they’ve got a nice aroma to them.”
Of course, you don’t have to roast your chestnuts.
“You can split them and then boil them in salty water – boil them for about 20 minutes, get them all softened up inside and then you peel them, and they are nice and salty.”
So where do they source the chestnuts for Snowflakes?
“Well, they grow a lot of them in Victoria at Bright and the King Valley area but they’re growing everywhere,” Angelo explained.
“There is a big patch of them in Tenterfield once you’ve gone down the hill going into town from this side, as you go around the corner on the lefthand side, there is a patch of them there, great big trees. They’ve only just finished harvesting them in the past few weeks. People grow them everywhere. My father planted a few trees on the farm too and we had them for quite a number of years, slowly, slowly they got a bit like me – a bit of old age to them and got a bit wobbly and started to fall apart.
“But anybody can grow them.”
Of course, Chestnut roasting is not Angelo’s only role though the other is a little more unofficial – bringing in some warm liquid refreshment for the hardy farmers and helpers who make the snowfield.
“I bring in a little bit of warming sustenance – I have to warm their hands up because otherwise they won’t make any more snow,” he deadpans.
“Trouble is that the mongrels have got hold of it and they want it every time now. It costs me a fortune. I tell them I’ll just borrow some port from the people that can’t sell theirs and I’ll bring them that instead, not going to give them my good stuff,” he jokes.
“No, it’s a really tough job, it really takes it out of you, it’s freezing cold, your handling ice, ice, ice. If you’re not touching it with your hands, you’re all around it. Everything is cold, the shovels are cold, the machine is cold, everything is cold, so they need a bit of warming up.”
