Thursday, January 8, 2015

Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

One of the street foods Istanbul is famous for is roasted chestnuts. I lived here for four years before I learned it wasn't just a street food, but a cherished Turkish wintertime tradition for home too. Roasted chestnuts must have been a tradition for America as well. That fabulous Christmas carol had to come from somewhere, didn't it?

Recently, I moved into a new apartment, with a young Turkish woman. The first time she made homemade roasted chestnuts, she said, "now, I feel like it is really winter." Then she taught me how to make them at home. It's so easy, and so satisfying!
First, cut a cross into the hull,
so the hull will steam open later.
Then soak the chestnuts
so they will steam
themselves over heat.

If you skip this step,
or don't soak them long enough,
(at least 10 minutes)
the nuts become
hard and bitter to eat.

I discovered
you can throw them back
into the water,
to try and get them right
a second time.
Ooohh,
don't they just look wonderful?
They cook so beautifully
in a cast iron skillet.
Grateful for a real fire
on a cold winter night
Last week, I was invited to a party at a Turkish film maker's
place on Büyükada Island in the Marmara Sea. "There will be a fireplace!" my friend Burcu said, on an especially cold day. I wondered if it would be possible to roast chestnuts over it, just like the song, so I brought a kilo of large Bursa chestnuts as a gift.
A fire is so
comforting on a
cold, Winter evening
Our host,
Turkish film maker
 Erdal Rahmi Hanay
It was possible
to roast them
over an open fire!
Roasted chestnuts
were such a fun treat
to cook and share!
Former American
chestnut range
I became curious why there aren't chestnuts for sale in America anymore. I was sad to discover that at one time, chestnut forests were plentiful in the eastern United States with stands adding up to three billion trees. At one time, chestnut forests accounted for 25-30% of all of Appalachia's forests. Unable to fight off disease from imported Asian chestnuts, the American chestnuts developed blight and died off.

There is a group trying to bring back the original American chestnut, and a group trying to bring back a disease-resistant hybrid. I wish them well. Roasting chestnuts is a beautiful wintertime tradition. We don't want that gorgeous song, to be the equivalent of an audio fossil hearkening back to an earlier time whose reality we have forgotten. Let's make it real!

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