She's a contributor to Real World Gardener on 2RRR FM, was featured in Breathe Magazine UK and was awarded Best Edible Garden as well as Eco Champion in Randwick Council Garden Awards. As for peeling the little blighter’s we have discovered that snipping off the rounded end of the shell is less bloody and quicker than the slicing method. To see the exact steps Chris took to make the orgeat, just scroll down to the end of the “recipe” box below. Then, at the headquarters, the fruits undergo carefully observed maceration with very pure neutral alcohol and blending with the correct proportion of sugars to achieve the balance between fruit flavour, sweetness, acidity and alcohol to create top of the range crèmes and liqueurs. Make a cut two thirds of the way around the flat face of the skin and peel it away then ease the rest of the nut out of the skin.

We only moved into the town from there when our son started school as it was too far to drive each morning. While orgeat usually separates in 5-10 minutes, it took around three times as long to see the separation in ours.

I wanted to let you know that I have just peeled a batch for a stuffing, but this time I peeled them whilst still frozen and the outer skin is so brittle it comes off very easily. It seems the gelatin did make a difference in the cocktail foam, not just in its beautiful smooth and silky consistency, but in creating a very stable canvas for our stencil.

Place the nuts in a wide saucepan and cook very gently in 200ml of water for another 10 minutes with the lid on and without stirring. We didn’t have Xantham gum in the house, but we did have powdered gelatin, another thing you can use as an emulsifier. The first step on the ladder in the process is contracting the right growers to produce the finest, best quality, ripe fruit. I was in the Var, Provence’s most unspoiled department, for the nutty festivities, which take place over the last three Sundays in October. Most of the husks contain tiny wafers of empty skins and even the occasional decent sized nut is a third the size of its south European sisters.

Running it through a coffee filter will remove some of the opacity but will also strip some of the flavour.

I was delighted to find this recipe for Italian sweet chestnut liqueur when I was nosing about on the Internet last week. They are fine but do not compare with the rounded flavour of sweet chestnuts that you have prepared yourself.Chestnut trees grow very well - and very large - in Britain but their crop of nuts is almost invariably disappointing. This recipe came about when I made an amaretto-less version, and my sister, Bean, thought it tasted even better with amaretto. Though the silence was welcome, I knew the party awaited in Collobrières and when I arrived, the town was filling up with stalls for the weekend’s festivities.