Torta Di Castagne

Torta di Castagne

Minty In the old days, they used to say 'you are what you eat.' Nowadays, we all know there's much more to it than that. You are what you source. You are what you Aga-bake. Above all, you are what you overspend. Low spending is a sign of low self esteem. Just ask those fat people in the Co-Op. As they waddle up and down the aisles, buying a UHT cream-filled sponge for little Kym's birthday cake, they might as wear a placard that says 'I don't love myself. Or Kym.'

Well, forget Kym, Torta di Castagne e Cioccolata is a birthday cake fit for David. Michelangelo's David! It's a real Italian masterpiece. Not only does it taste superb, it sends out the right message to your kids: 'You may be five but don't compromise.'

Before we plunge into our Torta, let's just whizz through the trimmings without which no kiddies' tea party's complete.

Double-glazed with olive oil, it has to be The Prince Of Wales' batch-cooked, organic, hand-baked, river-salted crisps. So pure and traditional is the organic potato flavour that they go by the name of 'Crisp Flavour Crisps'. These are the crisps that made Prince Charles a household name. And, needless to say, with their classic crisp shape, they go really well with architecture. (Highgrove Deli, £3.25).

Hazelnut and ricotta tarts. It's just one of those marriages, like Cliff and The Public. (For suppliers and all 24-hour breaking ricotta news, go to www.ricotta.com).

Roquefort, prosciutto and fennel bruschetta. (Go to www.roquefortprosciuttoandfennelbruschetta.com).

One of the lovely things about TV celebrity is I get invited to tastings of new products, simply by ringing up and asking. That's how I discovered the venison chipolatas made by The Lifestyle Deer House of Woodbridge. Woodbridge is a charming market town in Suffolk, although, as I discovered to my cost, there's a reason why its hairdressers are so cheap!

Two local ladies, Caroline and Penny, make all their own chipolatas, sourcing deer from their nearby surrounding environment. I'd always found venison tough and old and dry. Their lifestyle venison couldn't be more different. As Simon says, it really is like eating Bambi not its mother. They're £16.80 a kilo, though I only ate less than three hundred grams of them personally. You can never tell from eating one. There was a song, I can't remember who it was by, but the gist of it was, do it to me one more time, once is never enough. That's what I'm like with new tastes. I just need to keep on tasting them, on and on, forcing myself to have one more till I really 'get the point'.

For the Torta, you'll need: Normandy butter, organic, 120gms Provencal chestnuts, 500 gms Shropshire goat's milk, 200ml Galician almonds, blanched, 100gms Belgian chocolate, 92 per cent cocoa, 100gms Mauritian caster sugar, 250 grams Nr Banbury egg yolks, five

Waltz a hundred grams of organic unsalted organic butter round a highly-sprung cake tin.

Ligne the bas with baking parchment. Hot-bubble the chestnuts in the lait de chèvre till they're al dente enough to manger.

Hurl the disappointed chestnuts into the Mouli con your Galician almonds. Make sure you buy chestnuts that have been shelled, blanched then deep- frozen to minimise the risk of insect attack. There's a never-ending war between man and insects to get to the best chestnuts first.

But man's got more money and will always win in the end.

Do a Chocolate Run to Brussels for the amazing Belgian chocolate made by Anton Maeterlinck. Between Eton School and Oxford University, Simon spent his gap year in Brussels, learning all about chocolate at the feet of Anton - which apparently really did smell of cocoa powder! His ninety two per cent cocoa solids set a new gold standard.

Put your un-organic salted organic butter and caster sugar into your Mouli. Disorientate till they're the colour of sunrise over the Duke of Dorset's villa in Tuscany (where I met Sir Elton John).

Caution the egg yolks and invite them into the mix, fostering the whites in a blue bowl for adoption later.

Swish your chocolate and nut melange. Hand-squeeze the wind-dried organic breath of a lemon. Pirouette a quarter of the adopted egg whites into the chocolate mixture. The mixture will be excited. This is no cause for alarm, as the eggs will relax it. Nurture the remnant.

Lower your perfect cake mix, serene but not comatose, into your cake tin. Forewarn your Aga to 150 and furnace for forty six minutes.

Now wait for the patter of tiny feet yelling 'Torta! Torta! Torta!'. My nephew Vaughan, who's rising five, and my niece Milly, who's three and a half now, can't get enough of this Torta di Castagne and I'm the same. The look on their faces almost makes up for not having kids of my own, which I don't want anyway. Simon and I are far too busy making POSH NOSH. In a funny way, we think of these recipes as our children. Eat and enjoy!

Simon I have never seen the point of children. They know nothing about food and aren't allowed to drink alcohol. (In France, of course, they do things differently. A sensual appreciation of the good things in life begins, as it should, at birth. French boys grow up believing they drank wine instead of milk.)

So. With the Torta di Castagne, let them drink water. Don't waste your breath asking them if they want still or sparkling. Kids never know what they want. Unless it's broccoli, of course. The lure of the floret completely escapes me and yet three year olds can't get enough of the stuff. Perhaps it's eaten by those Television Tubbys.

'Still or sparkling?' It's a phrase I've banned from The Quill and Tassel along with 'Is service included?' There's something moronic and unfeeling about the way such phrases are rabbited out.

One June day in 2000, I was doing a Water Run in the Vosges when I sourced the most marvellous spring. So gently carbonated, I didn't know if it was still or not.

Et voilà, you can now buy The Quill and Tassel Starkling Water. It's still AND sparkling. It drinks both ways. Happy now?