I found chestnuts on sale at the store today. I thought the trees had all died out from the blight years ago. I know there are a few around, but I thought they too die before they get very old. I also have heard of a few organizations that are trying to grow blight resistant trees by different means, including hybridizing with some other variety. I thought success with this was limited and still several years off.
Still, where did these chestnuts in the store come from? Are they really the chestnuts of yore? or are they imported from a different continent and from a different species? Are they from the hybridized resistant variety, that I thought was still years away?
Furthermore, how am I supposed to eat these? Roasted? Grandpa and grandma have long been dead…How should I roast them?
Shooting from the hip here, I believe it’s just the American chestnut that was wiped out by the blight. The European chestnut species is still doing just fine, producing tons of chestnuts, thank you very much.
I even recall reading about research on trying to insert European chestnut genes into the
American chestnut to give it resistance to the chestnut blight.
In the meantime, enjoy the chestnuts! They taste like they’re imported!
The following is a cut and paste from what I posted in my Tennesse Fruit thread.
Sometime in the early 80’s a groove of American Chestnuts were found by La Crosse Wisconsin in the bluff heights. The 90 acre grove had survived by it’s isolation. The nuts where supposed to be used to reestablish the decimated species. I see that the trees are now infected since people started going there.
I am here speaking off the top of my head, from memory about reading about the American chestnut and its extirpation, but:
The chestnut blight affects mature trees, so saplings are around. Unfortunately they don’t get big enough to fruit before being blighted. Most (not all) saplings are from the roots of blighted trees, which survive quite well but cannot support a fullgrown tree owing to the blight. An occasional tree survives to fruiting age before becoming blighted, so a few saplings derive from nuts rather than rootstock.
There are a few disease-resistant American chestnut trees surviving (other than that grove, which was not resistant but isolated). There is a hope to restore the trees from them, either as a “pure” strain or by crosses with European and east-Asian chestnut species.
Someone with expertise confirming the above and supporting it with cites, or refuting anything I’m in error on, would be appreciated.
I remember the first time my wife’s family roasted Chestnuts for the holidays. I love nuts and had a romantic notion of “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire.” One bite and…[insert puke smiley here]. That ceratinly wasn’t the national treasure I was thinking of.
I have a 10 year old Sweetheart American Chestnut tree in my yard and doing quite well. I haven’t checked the links above but I’m sure they mention this hybrid.
Shagnasty, I wasn’t too impressed with the nuts, either, and the trees have one big drawback: they stink like ass when they are in flower. Still, it’s pretty cool to tell people you have a chestnut tree. From some European cookbooks, I have learned that you can substitute cooked navy beans in most recipes, provided they are recipes heavily flavored with chocolate or mocha. The texture is very much the same.
There iare groves of successfully harvested Chestnut trees in Italy.
Side note on Chestnut wood: Chestnut wood is a dream to many carpenters, and some still build with chestnut that has been salvaged from old building. American chestnut, like Cherry, is distinctly…well…distinctly American.
I believe there is an effort underway to restore Elms and Chestnut trees, that, if successful, would see decent populations 75-100 years from now.
I just got back from a vacation in Italy, and they were roasting and selling them on the streets of Florence and Rome.They were surprisingly good!!
Surprisingly, because I had some here in the US a number of years ago, and I too thought they were kind of pukey and wondered what all the fuss was about. Of course, in that case we roasted them ourselves and maybe didn’t know how to do it right.
I like the chestnuts raw. They taste a little like coconut meat when ripe. Anybody buying chestnuts should know that they turn bad in a couple weeks if not stored properly. You need to buy them from a store when they come in, or like for them in the refrigerated section. Chestnuts that are left at room tempurature turn moldy and dry out to the hardness of stone in as little as a couple weeks.
Well, based on what I’ve learned here in the last couple of hours, I nipped the tops off of them with pruning shears; put them in an oven at 375 for about 20min. then peeled and ate.
I was all set to be disappointed based on the above testimonials.
Man, them’s goooood eaten! I’ll have to get more.
They did have kind of a mushy, cooked bean mouthfeel to them, but they were nutty and suprisingly sweet.
The shells are so thin you don’t need much effort to cut the shell. I use a paring knife to peel them. I cut the end of at the tip, slip the blade between the meat and shell, then I rotate the blade to peel it like an apple.
I made a bûche de Noël once, and prepared the raw chestnuts the French way by boiling them, peeling them, and mashing them. It isn’t far removed from preparing mashed potatoes. Actually, puréeing them would have been better if I’d had the equipment; that was during my “poor but gourmet” period.