Sweet Chestnut

NL: tamme kastanje / F: Marrons / PL: kasztan jadalny

Sweet chestnuts are incredibly nutritious and offer their fruits abundantly without the need for big human input. All one needs to do is to plant a tree and take some little care of the baby tree (like giving it some water in overly dry seasons) until it reaches a considerable size and from then on, the tree will take care of itself. That puts them among some of the most sustainable foods ever.

Consuming grains means large amounts of land being used for growing the crops, large machines are employed in harvest, usually ruining the soil fertility, then they are processed, stored and transported until it gets to the consumer. Chestnut trees, on the other hand, do a great job in the soil, offer shelter and food to wild animals, birds, insects, clean up the air and on the top of that they yield precious foods that can be easily harvested.

Sweet chestnuts grow easily in most of the Northern hemisphere. It is hardy from zones 5-7.

The skin of sweet chestnuts can be easily removed after steaming or blanching the nuts. Score them by a cross slit at the tufted end (where the colour of the skin is lighter than the rest).

cutting the chestnuts like this makes peeling much easy, specially if they are still hot

In France most people prepare their chestnuts directly on the fire with the use of special pans, like this one:  'La Lyonnaise' Poêle à Marrons . These are pretty handy to use and it allows you to peel both the outer shell and inner dark brown layer (which doesn't bother me but it might give a little rough effect in some creamy recipes). Note that if you don't have direct fire to cook with - meaning, if you use an induction, ceramic or electric cooking stove - these pans are not an option.

Cooked, steamed or roasted chestnuts are very versatile and can be used in endless culinary ideas, sweet or savory. You can use them to thicken desserts, soups, puddings... they can be added to various vegetable stews instead of grains, as they absorb the sauce and help to enrich the dish. They can also be turned into flour for bread making or as a thickener in various culinary creations.


Here are a few examples of where and how I use cooked/steamed chestnuts in:
- smoothies with banana, carob or cocoa powder
- hot drinks, with almond milk and spices (like the recipe in this post) or with chocolate
- creamy sweet spreads with vanille and dates or with - guess what? - melted dark chocolate! ;-)
- savory spreads with nutmeg, chilli pepper, tahini, garden herbs such as rosemary or basil
- tapenades with sundried tomatoes, capers, nutritional yeast, olives, sambal and lemon juice + zest
- stews instead of rice or noodles - I just add them at the end of the cooking, lightly broken
- Thai or Indian curries, also instead of noodles or rice
- pancakes, cakes, bread...
- burgers, with some chickpea flour or oat flakes and spices
- add to seitan recipes, for extra richness
- lasagne white sauce (instead of wheat flour as used in bechamel)
- pizzas and calzones
- croquettes
- or I simply freeze them for later use.


*Note: if you harvest sweet chestnuts for the first time, please make sure to learn the difference between them and horse chestnut, a similar nut that can also be found in similar environments during the same season. Here is a post with pictures that can help you with that:
Sweet chestnuts and Horse chestnuts: how to tell the difference.


Next to its use as foods, chestnut leaves are rich in tannins and can also be used as a first aid herbal medicine to help stop bleedings and diarrhea. Its leaves can be also used in concoctions and syrups to help relieve respiratory ailments.

The tree flowers are harvested during spring time and used in Bach flower remedies.

Now with chestnut harvest season open we'll be cooking every day something with sweet chestnuts. 

Here is a recipe for a Chestnut Spice Latte

Ingredients:

100g steamed and pealed chestnuts (or 300g sweet potato or pumpkin, baked in the oven)

600 ml almond milk (or a mixture oat milk + coconut milk or the milk of your preference)

1 1/2 t.s. cinnamon 

sweetener to taste (sucanat / mascobado, agave syrup, dates, stevia)

1 t.s. cardamom powder

1/4 t.s. mace powder (or nutmeg)

1/4 t.s. allspice powder

1/2 t.s. freshly grated ginger

2 tbsp orange compote or 1/2 t.s.. orange zest (optional)

1 tbsp orange water

Other nice additions are saffron and 1/4 t.s. red chilli flakes

freshly harvested sweet chestnuts are highly nutritious and can take part in so many delicious recipes

Rinse the sweet chestnuts and make shallow cuts on their round part to help steaming go smoother and to help with pealing them. Steam them for 10 minutes or until they show the little cross cuts open up. Peel them while they are still hot as it is much easier than when they cool down.

Mix the cooked and peeled chestnuts with all the other ingredients until smooth and bring the liquid to a quick boil over medium-heat until the chestnut and milk seem well thickened. If too thick, add more milk. Serve immediately.

Feel free to play with the spices of your preference adding a little bit more or less of each spice. The suggested amounts here are more a guideline than a "rule". Each version I make tastes totally different. There is no problem if you don't have all these spices at home. It works fine sometimes only with cinnamon, cardamom and orange compote for instance. 

Here are some nutrition facts from sweet chestnuts (source: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/nut-and-seed-products/3143/2) :

Crunchy & healthy snacks with wild leaves

Here is a very easy and delicious recipe that will convince everyone - even the kids! - to eat more wild greens. It is also a great way to shift to healthier snacks and it might help curb other undesirable food cravings - usually for junk.

You will need a food dehydrator for this recipe. It can be an electrical one or a solar one. There are many tutorials and videos on youtube on how to build a solar dehydrator using recycled materials. Some of those ideas work even in places where there is often not enough sun to get things dry, such as where I live. Some regular ovens can work on low temperatures, so if you have one of those that might also work out.

What you need for this recipe:

Wild leafy greens; freshly picked: dandelion, ground ivy, valerian, mint, etc.

Coating:

Tahine (sesame paste)

Sea salt

Coconut aminos, miso or tamari (all optional)

Water (or apple juice if you want to give it a sweet contrast) 

Herbs of your choice. I use rosemary, oregano, savory, thyme or other available aromatics

A pinch of chili

Lime zest + lime juice

Rinse the wild greens and dry them in a salad spinner. Mix the ingredients for the coating well until smooth. Dip each leaf in the liquid, making sure they are entirely covered with a thin layer of it and place them in the dehydrator trays. You may also work with teflex baking sheets over the trays, to protect the trays from getting too messy. Do not place leaves over one another. Dehydrate under 40°C to 45°C until crunchy (it may take from 2 to 5 hours, depending on how thick the coating is and how moist the air is outside. If you want an extra crunchy layer you can make sure the dip coating is thicker - but that will take much longer to get it dry. A thin layer will be also crunchy, but very fragile. When ready, take them out of the trays immediately and store them in a very good air tight container until the moment to be served. Sometimes after a few minutes after they are out of the dehydrator they start getting soft again. If they get soft again because you did not take them out of the dehydrator quick enough, just run the dehydrator half and hour extra and they will get back their crunchiness. 

Instead of tahine you can also use other nut or seed pastes (cashew, almonds, hazelnuts...). I sometimes add some hemp seeds to the coating dip, without mixing it. That gives a very nice texture to the snacks. 

Green smoothie with wild weeds

This is our favorite way to consume these superfoods, by making delicious green juices and smoothies.

We use the juicer mainly for leaves that contain too much fibers, such as winter kale, old dandelion leaves, (wheat or oat or other type of) grass or plantain. Otherwise we use all the greens with fruits to make smoothies. The best smoothies are made in a high speed blender, such as Vitamix, Magimix or Omniblend.

It is pretty simple and you don't really need a recipe to make delicious smoothies. Just add the greens of your preference together with fruits that are growing in that season. Here are some guidelines.

1. Get a full bowl of some:
- young dandelion leaves
- young fresh tops of stinging nettle
- young leaves of ground ivy
- young plantain leaves
- wild mint or lemon balm
- whatever else green you can find depending on the season

2. Rinse the greens carefully.

3. Put some fruits in your blender and add water or fruit juice

4. Add the wild weeds

5. Blend and enjoy !

You can also make these green smoothies using any cultivated greens if they are more easily available at some point - such as rocket greens, watercress, purslane or young kale.

Sometimes the richest parts of the plant, such as radish, turnip and carrot greens, are thrown away when they could be perfectly used in juices or smoothies. In fact if you have natural, non sprayed grass in your back yard you can just harvest every day a bit of that grass and juice it.

If the greens you are using are very fibrous and you don't have a (good) juicer, you can blend the leaves first with water of fruit juice and strain them in a fine sieve or cheese cloth before drinking.

A very easy and simple combination is to blend your greens with appel juice, sieve it or not, depending on the greens used and on the personal preference, and add some freshly squeezed lemon juice at the end.

Next to vitamins and minerals boost that we get from drinking green juices, the chlorophyll content in it has strong energizing, detoxifying and general healing properties.


Here is a video where Valya Boutenko teaches us how to improve the taste of green smoothies, making it more appealing to those still unfamiliar with high amounts of greens at once:

How to Make a Tasty Green Smoothie