Chestnuts Old and New

by Bruce Schimmel

The classic tune may celebrate chestnuts roasted over an open fire, but the song is wrong. Really fresh chestnuts are much, much tastier if they’re microwaved.

It's true. Cut an X into the pod -- so they won't explode -- and zap them for about a minute and a half. The nutmeats will be almost as soft as a spud and nearly as sweet as halvah.

But you can only zap, steam or braise chestnuts if they are really fresh, and finding fresh chestnuts in the supermarket is nearly impossible, because most come from Europe by slow boat.

Which is why, as Nancy Petitt puts it, everyone wants her chestnuts. Nancy and her husband, Gary, have a small orchard of chestnut trees, about 16 acres, in Townsend, Del. -- about 30 miles southwest of Philadelphia. The Petitts are among a handful of chestnut growers in America, and the only one within a radius of 100 miles.

Chestnuts are a fresh fruit, explains Nancy, and should be refrigerated -- which explains why most supermarket chestnuts are the way they are. Cut open a raw supermarket chestnut, and you'll probably see grey fuzz around the nut. Smell it carefully. That smell is mold. Cut the meat in half. If there are black streaks running through the nut meat, that is the beginning of rot.

You need to roast store-bought chestnuts, because when roasted, the smoke from the burnt outer pod masks the mold and the rot. When you eat that chestnut, what you mostly taste is smoke with a mealy texture. This is only a suggestion of what a real chestnut tastes like.

I grew up on chestnuts sold by street vendors in New York City. I loved them and still do. But until I tasted Nancy Petitt's chestnuts, I was a virgin.

Chestnuts -- and their trees -- used to be plentiful; there seems to be a Chestnut Street in every old settlement in America. But native trees were eventually wiped out in the early 20th century because of the chestnut blight that came from imported trees.

Nancy Petitt's chestnuts are a blight-hardy varietal. Smaller than the store-bought kind, they practically pop out of their pods and can almost be eaten raw.

Nancy's favorite recipe is chestnut soup, sweet and meaty, with all the colors of fall. My current favorite is a Cordon Bleu concoction: a veal, pork sausage and chestnut stew from Barcelona. (You could use chicken instead of veal.) In your mouth, the chestnuts feel like fingerling potatoes, the taste of a vegetable and the aroma of a fruit.

For more information visit www.buychestnuts.com or contact Nancy Petitt at 302-659-1731. She says she’ll probably sell out by early December. Hear Petitt in her orchard at: www.schimmel.com/chestnuts.mp3.