Bunya nut adventures (pt. 1)

Last week was an exciting week for us when we got our hands on two bunya nut cones.  The Araucaria bidwillii, or bunya pine, is an enormous coniferous tree which grows these giant cones every few years.  The cones are massive.  They don't look it but they're actually really heavy, weighing somewhere between five and ten kilos each (11-22 pounds).  The first task is to break apart the cones, pull apart the seed pods and remove the seeds.  Each seed or nut is about the size of of an avocado pit, albeit a little more elongated. 

We got a full bowl out of the two cones (not all of the seeds are large enough to bother with) and a heaping garbage bag full of the seed pods.  After breaking apart the cones and getting all the nuts out of the husks, we still have to roast and shell them.  (You can eat them raw, but raw we thought they tasted kind of like bitter green beans, and after roasted they are sooo delicious.)  Shelling the nuts involves bashing each one both before and after to get a crack in the shell to be either pried or cut open.  We used a rolling pin and a pliers, and with two people the whole process from beginning to end took a few hours.  Part two we'll have some photos of the second stage!

The seed pods are really interesting - kind of like a giant fish scale