Throw a chestnut on the barbie
"Their texture is crumbly and starchy, their flavour sweet but earthy, and, culinarily speaking, they can go in all sorts of directions, much like the fireworks you may see tonight." Yotam Ottolenghi
A friend who is an occasional reader of my blog, suggested chestnuts as a topic. Which was a bit serendipitous really because I had noticed heaps of them in the market last week and also, in the course of exploring John Evelyn yesterday I came across a couple of mentions of chestnuts.
So chestnuts. Let me say at the outset that I don't really like them. Though truth to tell I'm not sure whether I have ever eaten the roasted kind - even though there were lots of people roasting them in the streets when I was a child. We saw this stall in Rome - it must have been May - which I would have thought was a bit late - they are an autumn/winter thing and apparently should be roasted at just the right moment. I took the photo not only because it was picturesque in itself but it was just in front of the Spanish Steps (behind me) and the Gucci shop (behind him). It seemed an interesting juxtaposition to me. Food of the poor and an ultra expensive fashion shop.
For in my mind chestnuts are akin to acorns in that they are pig food and poor peasant food forming a basic, stodgy and pretty yucky diet for the poor in times of scarcity. Now I'm sure this is very unfair and I don't know where I got it from but that's definitely the association for me. That and conkers (you can't eat them - they're poisonous), marrons glacés and horrible chestnut purée desserts like Mont Blanc. For this is how I encountered them in France. The French are big into chestnuts. The Italians too.
Going back to the roasting. As I said - tricky.
"Roasting chestnuts on an open fire may be a cliché, but that doesn't mean we are all born knowing how to do it. There is technique and there is judgment, and without either there is every chance of ending up with a case of barbecued sausage syndrome - as in, burnt on the outside, raw in the middle." Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall
In England they traditionally roast them on bonfire night - Guy Fawkes - November 5th - whatever you like to call it. Though at my house we preferred to roast potatoes. Maybe my mother didn't like chestnuts either - they certainly didn't enter our diet. Lots of the sites I visited in the course of 'researching' this post compared the taste to a nutty potato or sweet potato, (which sounds nice) including the rather wonderful Australian Chestnuts site:
"They are only eaten cooked and have a sweet, nutty taste but a texture similar to that of a firm baked potato rather than the crunchy texture of other nuts….in fact, similarly we like to categorise potatoes in the sense that some varieties are better for mashing, some for roasting, some for salads. Australian Chestnuts are so versatile can be used in savory and sweet recipes or eaten as a delicious snack on their own." Australian chestnuts
Dickens was into them - which may have been another reason for the association with poor people's food - even though we were poor, like all poor people we probably didn't think of ourselves as poor. Or didn't want to. So we didn't eat them.
But you can do more than roast them and eat them out of paper cones. Indeed it seems that the only thing you can't do with them is make oil. They must be too dry. The most popular uses seemed to be in stuffings, in soups, with brussels sprouts and mushrooms and in desserts and cakes. You can make flour with dried ground chestnuts but I believe it is very hard to get it to rise. it's a bit dense in fact. I won't give you lots of places to look for recipes - they are easily found, but the most interesting that I saw were from Yotam Ottolenghi. The plum, chestnut and walnut tart looked quite tempting I have to say.
Way back in the 17th century John Evelyn thought that we didn't appreciate them enough.
"we give that fruit to our swine in England, which is amongst the delicacies of princes in other countries". ... Chestnuts are delicacies for princes and a lusty and masculine food for rusticks, and able to make women well-complexioned." .John Evelyn
Peeling chestnuts is also tricky. You roast them with the skin on, having removed the prickly outer casing. Unless you have your own tree you are unlikely to encounter the prickly bit. But if you are doing other things with the chestnut you will need to peel them and this is also tricky. Nigel Slater tells you how:
"Using a short, sharp knife (or even a Stanley knife), cut a small slit in the flat side of the shell of each chestnut. Put them into a heatproof bowl. Pour over a kettle of boiling water and leave for 15 minutes. Remove the chestnuts from the water and peel away the outer shell and as much of the brown skin as you can." Nigel Slater
But I'm guessing there are hundreds of other tips and tricks out there.
And of course they are amazingly nutritious and benefit you in all sorts of healthy ways. I'm beginning to think that almost everything does. One day somebody will say sugar is healthy. Nevertheless the health benefits have been around for a long time.
If you dry the chestnut, both the barks being taken away, beat them into powder and make the powder up into an electuary with honey, it is a first-rate remedy for cough and spitting of blood." Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654)
The Ancients were using them for health as well as food at least as far back as 2000
BC.
They are also rather beautiful and the trees can be spectacular.
You can see where 'Under the spreading chestnut tree' comes from can't you?
So they are a popular subject for artists - below we have Ceruti, Renoir and Coorte.
Sorry - a bit irrelevant really but I do like finding old works of art. I think I particularly like the Ceruti and the Coorte ones.
In America almost all the chestnut trees were killed off by a blight. There are very few original chestnut trees remaining - some half a dozen small pockets. So they mostly import their chestnuts. Of course they are working on reintroducing new disease resistant varieties but obviously this will take time. It's a cool climate, highland tree so in Australia it is mostly grown in the Victorian north east - most notably around Myrtleford and also in south west WA. And it's a growing industry.
And let's not forget conkers. We played conkers a lot when I was a child. Everyone did. It was one of those playground games. I don't think I was ever into all the tricks and ruses for hardening your conker though. And there was always an abundance of conkers lying around. Conkers come from the horse chestnut tree which is a little different. John Evelyn drew them both for his book Sylva which was about trees. Chestnut on the left and Horse chestnut on the right.
As you can see - the horse chestnut has much bigger flowers. You can see the whole picture if you click on it. I thought I had heard that conkers had been banned for health and safety reasons, but apparently not, although there were major rumours of this. The appropriate government body had to issue a denial. What is true however is that some schools have banned it altogether, some have restricted when and where and some have insisted on goggles being worn. All a bit sad really isn't it? What is even sadder though is that children themselves are not so interested these days - they are too much into their digital games, and are playing less of those traditional playground games. Pretty soon I reckon there will be a movement to bring them back.
And finally - 'that old chestnut'. It seems it actually comes from a passing oblique reference in a nineteenth century play called Broken Sword by one William Dimond. Nothing much to do with old chestnuts. It means a story told over and over again. Now we all do that.
"Chestnuts are my favorite ingredient to use in the fall, especially for the holidays. I always find that they are meaty, hearty and have a mysterious refinement when cooked or roasted over sea salt." Geoffrey Zakarian
