A new experience for me has been to try my hand at roasting the harvest from our American Chestnut tree. I am happy to report it was a successful experiment and I now have a new recipe to share.
The first step of the recipe requires scoring an X on the rounded side of the nut. This will allow moisture to escape and the hull to curl back for easy removal of the nutmeat. Easy removal is not as easy as I had hoped.
The oven was preheated to 400' and I filled the bottom of a cast iron skillet with course salt, I added some scored nuts and sprinkled Fennel seeds over all and did just a few nuts as suggested in the instructions. I also wasn't sure if we would like the taste and didn't want to prepared lots if we didn't like them. Scoring the X's wasn't all that simple and I was getting a hand cramp. Following the instructions to cover the pan and roast for 30 minutes was truly easy.
Removing the pan and wrapping the nuts in a wet towel to let them begin to cool down was the next step. Then to quote from the recipe "Let the chestnuts steam under damp towel until they are barely cool enough to handle, about 2 to 3 minutes. Don't wait too long; the cooler they get, the harder they are to peel." Truer words were never written.
As the nuts roasted the shell curled up at the X cut and the nutmeat became golden brown. I found peeling back the hull required fancy thumbnail work catching the hull under my nails and exerting pressure away from each other seemed my best technique. I did this on the east and west curls and then the other two. If I got the hull opened enough the nut just popped out.
As the shells cooled the task got harder and harder, till I was scraping out nut meal. I'm so glad I only prepared a small handful. Perhaps in time I'll be flipping out nutmeat at a more efficient pace and may be able to engage helpers who also have a taste for Roasted Chestnuts.
One very smart suggestion was to serve the nuts in a steaming towel at the middle of the table and allow the guests to 'skin' their own nuts and "they'll do all the work and sing your praises, to boot, particularly if the nuts are accompanied by a good red wine."
The roasted chestnut of tradition and song are indeed tasty and worth the effort. I found the instructions at an internet site entitled
Step-by-step guide to skinning a chestnut.
I'm not sure if we didn't have the nuts littering the ground under the trees that I would actually go to all the bother, but I did enjoy the challenge and will do it again.
The first step of the recipe requires scoring an X on the rounded side of the nut. This will allow moisture to escape and the hull to curl back for easy removal of the nutmeat. Easy removal is not as easy as I had hoped.
The oven was preheated to 400' and I filled the bottom of a cast iron skillet with course salt, I added some scored nuts and sprinkled Fennel seeds over all and did just a few nuts as suggested in the instructions. I also wasn't sure if we would like the taste and didn't want to prepared lots if we didn't like them. Scoring the X's wasn't all that simple and I was getting a hand cramp. Following the instructions to cover the pan and roast for 30 minutes was truly easy.
Removing the pan and wrapping the nuts in a wet towel to let them begin to cool down was the next step. Then to quote from the recipe "Let the chestnuts steam under damp towel until they are barely cool enough to handle, about 2 to 3 minutes. Don't wait too long; the cooler they get, the harder they are to peel." Truer words were never written.As the nuts roasted the shell curled up at the X cut and the nutmeat became golden brown. I found peeling back the hull required fancy thumbnail work catching the hull under my nails and exerting pressure away from each other seemed my best technique. I did this on the east and west curls and then the other two. If I got the hull opened enough the nut just popped out.
As the shells cooled the task got harder and harder, till I was scraping out nut meal. I'm so glad I only prepared a small handful. Perhaps in time I'll be flipping out nutmeat at a more efficient pace and may be able to engage helpers who also have a taste for Roasted Chestnuts.
One very smart suggestion was to serve the nuts in a steaming towel at the middle of the table and allow the guests to 'skin' their own nuts and "they'll do all the work and sing your praises, to boot, particularly if the nuts are accompanied by a good red wine."The roasted chestnut of tradition and song are indeed tasty and worth the effort. I found the instructions at an internet site entitled
Step-by-step guide to skinning a chestnut.
I'm not sure if we didn't have the nuts littering the ground under the trees that I would actually go to all the bother, but I did enjoy the challenge and will do it again.
3 comments:
You have more patience then I have.
Love your wood images. I need to walk in my woods but it is so wet.
LIke the red bridge.
Actually I've had fun figuring out how to roast these chestnuts. The taste is rather bland and last year I tried boiling them and didn't like that at all.
Walks in the woods aren't to bad, we do have cleared paths, but wet branches do hang heavy and lower that normal so that a good shower seems to be the order of the experience.
Excellent taste. When we start getting lots of these nuts we
can do a cottage industry. Pay
for some health care.
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