We took our first batch of chestnuts out of the freezer the other day. I had read in the Joy of Cooking how to boil them in water and then pop out the nut meat (so much easier than carving an x in each nut and then coating in oil and then cutting each one open while still hot). Armed with my first recipe and my pot of steaming hot soft nuts, I sneaked a taste of the first one.
Oh my goodness gracious stars above. I think I've poisoned myself. The tannic acid in these babies is sooooo high. Soooo bitter. Disgusting. Poison. Want to die.
Okay. Pull yourself together. That's what raw chestnuts taste like. When they're cooked, like in Irma's steamed or boiled chestnuts, they're that creamy nutty goodness that people pay their college tuition for. Cooking breaks down the tannic acid, gets rid of the bitterness, so it's a joy to eat them.
Well, not so with these particular nuts. Was is it boiling them beforehand? A second source said to blanch for 3 minutes before peeling, as opposed to Irma's 25. Are these "au naturale" (i.e., scavenged) nuts supposed to be only ornamental? They look just like the ones you buy in the supermarket and the squirrels eat them. Our plan of attack is to wait a little bit for the memory of the disgustingness to pass and then try cooking them the good old-fashioned labor-intensive way we know how.
For this batch, we dumped the soggy nuts in a container from the recycling bin and let the squirrels go crazy. Except that's what it looked like a few days later too. Huh. I guess if even the neighborhood squirrels won't eat it, we should start back at ground zero.
