Nusstorte
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The Nusstorte is not much to look at: a flat golden disc of shortcrust pastry, lid included, that you could take for a giant biscuit. You have to cut it open to see what it hides, a thick layer of chopped walnuts caught in soft caramel. In Romansh, it is called tuorta da nuschs.
The recipe takes few words to tell, but every pastry cook keeps their own as a secret. The pastry brings together flour, sugar, eggs and butter. For the filling, sugar is first caramelised and loosened with full-fat cream, sometimes with a little honey, before the roughly chopped walnut kernels are stirred in. This mixture is spread over the pastry, closed with a second disc, and the tart bakes for about half an hour.
It was born of a journey. At the end of the 19th century, many people from Graubünden left to look for work elsewhere in Europe, and bakers from the region settled in Toulouse. There they discovered the walnut tart of the south-west. A pastry cook who had worked alongside them came back to the Upper Engadine, to Samedan, and began selling the tart in 1926, with a lid that sets it apart from the French tart. It has become the best-known speciality of Graubünden.
That lid has an advantage: well wrapped, the tart keeps for weeks. So it is happily sent by post, and eaten for dessert, with a coffee, a tea, or a glass of red wine at teatime.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Bündner Nusstorte” (German and English) and “Tourte aux noix des Grisons”.
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