Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published December 20, 2007 Chestnuts The Christmas song entitled "The Christmas Song" is the one that begins, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire." Everybody seems to love the Mel Torme composition, including other singers. It's on almost every album of popular Christmas music recorded. The lyrics of the song recall many of the furnishings of a traditional Christmas. Yuletide carols being sung by a fire, folks dressed up like Eskimos, etc. And, of course, chestnuts. But wait a minute. Have you ever in your life actually eaten a chestnut? If you live in New Orleans, probably not. Chestnuts are indeed still roasted in New York City and other parts of the Northeast, but even there the tradition isn't what it once was. With good reason. Have you ever in your life actually seen a chestnut tree? If you live in New Orleans, probably not. Or, in fact, if you live almost anywhere in this country. Chestnut trees are huge trees producing incalculable numbers of big nuts. Before the turn of the century, they accounted for, it's estimated, 25 percent of the forest east of the Mississippi River. But they caught a bad fungus in the early years of this century, and were all but wiped out. Every time I think about this, I consider the plight of the squirrels back then. When all those chestnuts disappeared in the course of just a few years, the Great Depression of Squirrels began. But nuts to the squirrels. Let's get back to eating these things ourselves. What do chestnuts taste like, anyway? Chestnuts don't taste like nuts. They're starchy, like hard potatoes that grow on trees. Indeed, during the many Great Depressions in Italy--where chestnuts still grow in abundance--the people ground the nuts up to make a kind of flour. For this reason, if you're looking for a recipe for chestnuts other than chestnut stuffing, the best place to look is in an Italian cookbook. Like Andrea's, for example, He has a chstnut soup in there that's pretty good. Felix Gallerani used to make chestnut stuffins at Cafe Volage, but her retired a few months ago. I encountered some candied chstnuts at Zoe in their Reveillon menu this year, but the chef clearly didn't know what to do with them. They were as inedible as acorns. If you want to try roasting chestnuts, the hard part is finding them. Some supermarkets have them, some don't. The second hardest step is finding a chestnut knife--a short-bladed knife with a little hook on the end of the blade. You won't find one, so just use a sharp paring knife. Whether you roast or boil chestnuts, step one is to cut an X through the outer layers of the flat side (there always is at least one). There's a special chestnut pan, too, but forget about finding one and just use a skillet with a long handle. Put one layer in the pan and roast the chestnuts (over an open fire, of course) until they burst open.   Then remove the paper-like outer peel, and eat them right there, nice and hot. More likely, though, you'll want to grind them up for stuffings, soups, or as an interesting admixture to mashed potatoes or pumpkin. If you want to see what a chestnut tree looks like, I know oif only one in the entire city. It's on the Wal-Mart side of the exit from the drive-thru at the Capital One Bank on US 190 in Covington. How it got there, I don't know. It's small and seems to be healthy. No chestnuts were on it this year, though. © 2007 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com