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Chestnut Knowhow
Abigail and Joy came to the chestnut harvest and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The were so many chestnuts waiting to be picked that they only had to move between three trees and their bag and basket were full.
Now we will give a layman's perspective on chestnut harvesting from instructions given on the day and many experiments. So firstly, you walk into the huge orchard. The chestnut trees produce prolifically and each tree is laden with its fruit.
The chestnuts themselves are protected within a spiky outer casing and the spikes can pierce the skin. Before the fruit falls, this casing has even started to open, but there is no need to ever pick from the tree itself. Ripe chestnuts are ready to harvest from the floor of the orchard under the green canopy. It is a rich experience in the cool of the leafy shade.
It is not unusual to see clusters of ripe chestnuts as closely packed together on the ground as the picture shows. You can stay under the one tree for a very long time and fill a while basket on what has fallen during the preceding days.
Because the outer casing is so spiky and still only partly open, you can use your shoe sole to properly split them. Fingers can then pick out the fruit. Gardening gloves can help if you get sick of being 'spiked'.
As we have already said, a load of chestnuts can be found from a reasonably small ground area. But it does not pay to take loads of them if you are not going to consume them regularly over the next few months. After that, the chestnuts can start to age and they won't cook well, nothing like they do when they are fresh. The internal flesh is very moist so they have a shorter shelf life.
Before baking a chestnut, make sure you score the 'flatter' surface. Sometimes you can't tell so it won't matter. We have found at a serrated knife is good for this. We have to hold the chestnuts tightly and cut with the knife firmly, but at the same time being careful not to cut the inner flesh too deeply. It is better that the internal flesh stays in one piece and will be easier to peel later. We turn the oven up to 200 degrees C at the start of the scoring so that the oven might have built up to that heat at the time we put them in.
We score twice, making a 'cross' over the flatter surface. This scoring allows the flesh to expand in the heat and force the stiff outer skin to open.
These are the same chestnuts after the baking. We kept the temperature at 200 degrees C for the whole baking time of 15 minutes. After we take them out, we let them cool down only a few minutes till we could just handle them with our fingers. Then we start peeling them. We don't like to bake too many chestnuts at one time because they are hard to peel once they have lost their heat.
What you want to achieve is having the flesh of the chestnut totally free of the 'woody' tasting inner skin. The chestnut that was scored before baking has an easy-to-remove brittle layer and a not-so-easy-to-remove thin skin. The hot chestnut flesh will usually allow this inner layer to be prised off without much trouble. When this skin clings determinedly you need some patience and helpful fingernails. If some of this light brown layer remains it is still nice enough to eat. Our experience is that if at least two-thirds is removed there is enough woody taste gone to appreciate the flesh which is something akin to that of a sweet potato. It is a lot of fuss but very nice.
Abigail and Joy came to the chestnut harvest and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. The were so many chestnuts waiting to be picked that they only had to move between three trees and their bag and basket were full.
Now we will give a layman's perspective on chestnut harvesting from instructions given on the day and many experiments. So firstly, you walk into the huge orchard. The chestnut trees produce prolifically and each tree is laden with its fruit.
The chestnuts themselves are protected within a spiky outer casing and the spikes can pierce the skin. Before the fruit falls, this casing has even started to open, but there is no need to ever pick from the tree itself. Ripe chestnuts are ready to harvest from the floor of the orchard under the green canopy. It is a rich experience in the cool of the leafy shade.
It is not unusual to see clusters of ripe chestnuts as closely packed together on the ground as the picture shows. You can stay under the one tree for a very long time and fill a while basket on what has fallen during the preceding days.
Because the outer casing is so spiky and still only partly open, you can use your shoe sole to properly split them. Fingers can then pick out the fruit. Gardening gloves can help if you get sick of being 'spiked'.
As we have already said, a load of chestnuts can be found from a reasonably small ground area. But it does not pay to take loads of them if you are not going to consume them regularly over the next few months. After that, the chestnuts can start to age and they won't cook well, nothing like they do when they are fresh. The internal flesh is very moist so they have a shorter shelf life.
Before baking a chestnut, make sure you score the 'flatter' surface. Sometimes you can't tell so it won't matter. We have found at a serrated knife is good for this. We have to hold the chestnuts tightly and cut with the knife firmly, but at the same time being careful not to cut the inner flesh too deeply. It is better that the internal flesh stays in one piece and will be easier to peel later. We turn the oven up to 200 degrees C at the start of the scoring so that the oven might have built up to that heat at the time we put them in.
We score twice, making a 'cross' over the flatter surface. This scoring allows the flesh to expand in the heat and force the stiff outer skin to open.
These are the same chestnuts after the baking. We kept the temperature at 200 degrees C for the whole baking time of 15 minutes. After we take them out, we let them cool down only a few minutes till we could just handle them with our fingers. Then we start peeling them. We don't like to bake too many chestnuts at one time because they are hard to peel once they have lost their heat.
What you want to achieve is having the flesh of the chestnut totally free of the 'woody' tasting inner skin. The chestnut that was scored before baking has an easy-to-remove brittle layer and a not-so-easy-to-remove thin skin. The hot chestnut flesh will usually allow this inner layer to be prised off without much trouble. When this skin clings determinedly you need some patience and helpful fingernails. If some of this light brown layer remains it is still nice enough to eat. Our experience is that if at least two-thirds is removed there is enough woody taste gone to appreciate the flesh which is something akin to that of a sweet potato. It is a lot of fuss but very nice.
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