Aegina's pistachio harvest. MOURTZIS.
MOURTZIS TRADITIONAL SWEETS AND PISTACHIO
mourtzis.com
It is the first day of the pistachio harvest.
The view is fantastic. Bright pink clusters of pistachios bedeck the deep green crowns of the trees in a valley surrounded by beige hills.
We harvest our pistachios the traditional way. While there are some motorized harvesting and gathering machines on the market today, we don’t use them. Just like my grandfather did, we gather the nuts by spreading out tarps underneath the trees and hitting the branches with sticks. When the pistachio is ripe, it will fall right off. The only thing slightly modern about our tools is that they’re covered with rubber at the end to protect the branches. In the old days we would wrap them in cloth.
The men work as a team, moving together from one tree to the next. They drag the tarps behind them, spread them out beneath the trees, circle them, and pick up their sticks. Harvesting a tree doesn’t take long, but the reward in the form of the pistachios in the tarp is big. It’s obvious they’ve done this many times. I snag a few handfuls of pistachios right off a tree, and eating them is an experience.
The fresh pistachio is covered in a soft outer shell that is easily removed when the nut is red and ripe. Under it is the slightly translucent inner shell which will be left on to harden and switch color during the drying and roasting process. The nut is crunchy even before processing, but the flavor is a lot more light and fresh; like a roasted pistachio mixed with an Armenian cucumber.
We empty the tarps into sacs and take the pistachios for cleaning the same day as they are picked. The outer shell is removed and the nuts are rinsed in water in the shelling machine. Any nuts with inner shells that have not opened are discarded, as well as any empty shells. Our shelling machine combines a fast spin and water pressure and the pistachios come out ready for drying.
That’s another step we choose to handle in the traditional way. We spread all the pistachios out on the roofs of our houses to dry in the sun for three to four days, depending on weather and humidity. There are machines for this as well, but by letting them dry naturally and slowly in the sun like this, they keep all of the natural flavor their juices provide.
More info at
Mourtzis Artisan Pistachios
Interview with Nikos Mourtzis of Mourtzis Traditional Sweets and Pistachios, a fifty-year-old family business. Nikos is a third generation farmer, and we're at one of the family's many pistachio groves in Aegina.
by Dimitris Drisas and Paulina Björk Kapsali
for TOOVIA Magazine
Read the entire interview and more about the Aegina pistachio here:
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