California Farm Roasted Chestnut Harvest
Raw Edible chestnuts mold easily and are all ripe at the same time, so we dry boil them to preserve in mason jars for year round use, an old french method.
Another year round use is a home made chestnut amber liqueur.
For fresh use, we cook them, make a delicious roasted chestnut cream soup with chestnut mushrooms and celeriac root, and puree them to make a chestnut spread for sandwiches, which keeps a week in the fridge. Here are the recipes.
This also shows you how to do a float test in a bucket of water, pick the four best and biggest chestnuts for planting, store them in the fridge for planting till spring, and grow beautiful trees for decoration, shade and bountiful annual harvests.
California Farm Roasted Chestnut Harvest
Raw Edible chestnuts mold easily and are all ripe at the same time, so we dry boil them to preserve in mason jars for year round use, an old french method.
Another year round use is a home made chestnut amber liqueur.
For fresh use, we cook them, make a delicious roasted chestnut cream soup with chestnut mushrooms and celeriac root, and puree them to make a chestnut spread for sandwiches, which keeps a week in the fridge. Here are the recipes.
This also shows you how to do a float test in a bucket of water, pick the four best and biggest chestnuts for planting, store them in the fridge for planting till spring, and grow beautiful trees for decoration, shade and bountiful annual harvests.
Cooking Instructions
- 1
To preserve chestnuts year round: cover whole chestnuts with water, remove floating chestnuts, do not use for preservation. Floating chestnuts are infected with insects or are moldy. Boil chestnuts 3 minutes.
- 2
Peel the outer peel and inner skin while hot. Put in pint masor jar, with only 2 Tbs water added. Seal with lid. Fill pan bottom with water. Jars will float, so fill pan with mason jars till they hold each other up and do not tip. Now cover jars with water higher than the content in the jars. Boil 90 minutes at 250F degrees with lid on. Let cool, dont touch, lift out when cooled, check lid for vacuum. Label with year date and store in pantry.
- 3
To make roasted chestnut cream soup:
Cross flat side of peel with knife, roast chestnuts 30 minutes at 425F degrees. Peel and dice the chestnuts. Put peeled chestnuts with cup of cream in food processor, make smooth puree. Pour into dutch oven with Porcini mushroom broth.
- 4
Add sliced chestnut mushrooms and diced celeriac root, bring to boil, simmer till celery dices are soft, 30 minutes. Garnish with fresh parsley and ground fresh nutmeg. Serve.
- 5
For the cream liqueur:
Cut a cross on the flat side of the chestnuts and roast in 425F degree oven till the peel splits, about 30 minutes. Cover roasted chestnuts, tsp seasalt in 100% plus alcohol and let steep for 3 months till the liquid is dark amber colored. Mix 3 parts amber alcohol liquid with 1 part simple syrup and store in reclosable pint size bottles. Use chestnuts to make sandwich spread.
- 6
For the chestnut butter sandwich spread: puree roasted chestnuts. Make brown sugar simple syrup, boil till thick. Mix with puree, melted ghee, seasalt and vanilla extract. 30 minutes. Spread will harden as it cools. Store in sanitized mason jar in fridge.
- 7
For planting: fill bucket with water, add your best and biggest unblemished chestnuts, remove the ones that float. Dry four of the leftover ones, put in paper bag in fridge, all winter, 3 months, plant in spring when soil is warming up. Update: planting failed, chickens snapped the shoots off. So I am sprouting chestnuts in the windowsill, will keep them potted indoors till big.
Cooksnaps
Did you make this recipe? Share a picture of your creation!
Similar Recipes
-
California Farm Edible Roasted Chestnuts California Farm Edible Roasted Chestnuts
When you see edible chestnuts for sale, put a handful in water and soak two or three that sink to the bottom. They are the freshest.Soak for a few weeks till the peel splits and then plant in pots in the window. Keep soil moist. They make handsome houseplants.The roasted flesh of chestnuts is very sweet, like a dessert. The outer shell and inner fleece will come right off once the chestnuts are roasted.Edible chestnuts are usually safe for people with other nut allergies.To serve them roasted, here is the recipe.
-
California Farm Chocolate Chestnut Spread California Farm Chocolate Chestnut Spread
The nut tree Castanea Sativa grows in all Mediterranean type climate zones in the world. Its nuts are small and flat and delicious when roasted. The seeds of this ancient chestnut tree are edible, as opposed to the american chestnut, which is poisonous. Immigrants planted these trees in California a long time ago, there was a disease, but some survived. The tree grows slowly, gets to be 100 feet tall and about 500 years old. Creme de marron is a paste made from these chestnuts. We like to eat it like marmelade.Note: 3 weeks after making the marron, keeping it in the fridge, grey mold appeared in the jar, I put it in the compost heap. Will try again next year. -
California Farm Rose Hip Harvest California Farm Rose Hip Harvest
I do not cut our dead roses from our rose bushes in the fall, they develop rose hip fruits. Great for making rose hip tea, rose hip syrup and rose hip jam.Rosehips turn dark when drying in the sun, like raisins.Three 8 foot high climbing Californica rose bushes and one climbing Rosa Rugosa bush produce about three pounds of dried rose hips annually. The birds in the garden collect the difficult to get to hips when ripe, I pick the easy ones. You can also order dried rosehips on Amazon to make your own tea. -
California Farm Plum Harvest California Farm Plum Harvest
Our plums are starting to ripen, and all at once. Here is how we process the ones we dont eat directly from the tree or give away. We added a Japanese plum wine recipe here and published a separate recipe for Amish plum wine.You can grow plum trees from ripe pits: scrub the pits, put in bowl of water, discard the floating ones, plant three pits in one planter hole in a large cloth planter pot with handles or in a planter bed in a sunny location.Plant in fall, they need winter cold to germinate. They will sprout in spring. Select the most vigorous one, remove other two.Drag planter pot around till you find a sunny location where the young plum tree flourishes.#GlobalApron -
California Farm Fresh Rhubarb Harvest California Farm Fresh Rhubarb Harvest
Rhubarb is ready and must all be harvested before summer, or it gets woody here in California. We make pint jars of rhubarb compote and freeze them to use for year round desserts. Also delicious rhubarb strawberry pies that freeze well. And drink fresh rhubarb juice. And save rhubarb syrup.And we make a very refreshing rhubarb wine, an Amish Farm tradition I learned working in Iowa. Called Piestengel wine, pie stalk wine.#CA2025 -
California Farm Annual Apple Harvest California Farm Annual Apple Harvest
Granny Smith apples are our horses’ favorite apples, and ours. They stay fresh a long time, dry well, make good apple sauce, great apple strudel, apple pie, apple donuts, apple beignets and apple “flaps”. The Granny Smith apples we use are medium size apples, 3 apples per pound. One to two apple trees produce several hundred apples, enough for all recipes below. -
California Farm Blood Orange Harvest California Farm Blood Orange Harvest
The first ripe blood oranges are falling off the tree, time to enjoy these fresh wonderfull fruits and process the peels. We also preserve peeled blood orange segments in light honey syrup to add to salads. Here are the recipes for our fresh juice and peel preservation methods. -
California Farm Annual Tomato Harvest California Farm Annual Tomato Harvest
Before the first night frost comes in November, time to process all the garden tomatoes, ripe or not. A pound of tomatoes make a pint of puree. A tablespoon of apple cider vinegar per pint keeps botulism out. The green tomatoes take longer to peel, then are cored, roasted, pureed and simmered. The red hard ones and red ripe soft ones are peeled, cored, pureed, then roasted and simmered. The over ripe ones are washed, quartered and sundried and stored in olive oil. We expect the next tomato harvest in June, 32 weeks from now, so I freeze 64 pints of puree, the basis for tomato soup, tomato sauces, tomato paste, salsa verde, and ketchup. They take little space in the freezer when stored in quart bags laid flat and frozen. -
California Farm Meyer Lemon Harvest California Farm Meyer Lemon Harvest
We grow Meyer lemons: they are big, juicy, tasty and frost resistant. They are ripe in February. Here is how we preserve and use them till next year’s harvest. All parts of the lemon are used: zest, peel, flesh, juice. 70 meyer lemons cover us for a year, they weigh over half a pound each. The potted tree produces between 50 and a 100. -
Bacon Roasted Chestnut Bacon Roasted Chestnut
Found in Kraft Foods recipe. I was looking for a way to enjoy chestnuts
-
California Farm March Goose Egg Harvest California Farm March Goose Egg Harvest
Mama goose laid her first spring egg this week, 6 ounces, 171 grams, my dog got it before I did. I lured mama goose in her goose run with whole corn and chopped carrots and locked the gate, so she can build a nest in peace, and hiss at me and the dog when we get close. She will now lay 30 or more eggs next 30 days.To use chicken eggs for these recipes, replace one goose egg with 3 large chicken eggs. One goose egg is as big as three chicken eggs, and the yolk alone is 2 ounces.Here are my proven goose egg recipes, we preserve these egg yokes and enjoy them year round. Egg whites go into salads and dogfood. -
A Flavor of Fall: Sweet Chestnut Rice ~ With Instructions for Peeling Chestnuts~ A Flavor of Fall: Sweet Chestnut Rice ~ With Instructions for Peeling Chestnuts~
I make chestnut rice every year. It's easy but gets rave reviews, so I wrote down the recipe.The key is the addition of the 'hidden flavor', shiro-dashi! It's light in color but flavors the rice subtly, and enhances the sweetness of the chestnuts rather than competing with it.Peeling the chestnuts depends on their state. Old chestnuts are, unsurprisingly, hard to peel. But if you treat them as described here, they are much easier to peel. For 4 to 5 servings. Recipe by yukarin55
More Recipes
Comments