Everything you ever wanted to know about Chestnuts, and probably a bit more

Chestnuts Chestnuts Chestnuts Chestnuts Chestnuts...for the next few weeks, that's all I'll be seeing in my waking hours and in my dreams...

Chestnuts are an awesome food, though -- they are roughly the nutritional equal to rice (so treat as a carb, not a nut!), and can provide a carbohydrate staple in the diet.  Different from other carbs, though, is that they grow on trees, renewed every year without any special care or special demands on the soil.

All our other carbs, rice, annual grains, corn, soya, are extremely demanding on the environment in so many ways -- they take loads of irrigating, which means salination of the soil as well as draining and ruination of wetlands. They take loads of nutrients from the soil, which means loads of petrolium  based fertilizers in order to use the same fields year after year  -- and without that petrolium based fertilizer, all those beautiful amber waves of grain are absolutely sterile (yeah, bio fuel my ass...hate to break it to the bio fuel believers out there, but the biomass doesn't grow in sufficient quantity without the petrolium based fertilisers...bit of a catch 22 there) They take loads of heavy machinery (also oil dependant) to sow, to harvest, and to process.  Grains on a large scale are simply not sustainable without oil, and as it starts to run out, we will have to learn to do with fewer annual grains and standard carbs in our diet.

But not so for chestnuts.  They just fall from the trees.  You can prune them a bit if you want, and it doesn't hurt to give them a bit of manure around the base, but whether you do or not, they will still make lots of yummy carbolicious fruit, which makes a flour usable like wheat flour (though the bread is not so nice and fluffy).  The problem with chestnuts is in the processing.  They are super yummy and delicious, but their shell and skin is a total PITA to remove. (Mind you, its not a piece of cake to thresh, separate and grind wheat by hand either, and so!)

I've been experimenting and researching all over the internet for other people's experiences and advice, and have tried about 16 million different methods so far (well, maybe 5 or 6...) and still, it takes at least an hour per kilo to prepare and shell chestnuts.  The best method I've found so far is to make a good long cut across the fat belly of the chestnut, then roast in a super hot oven for about 15-20 minutes.  The outside shell gets crackly and peels off easily. The inside skin, if not removed with the shell, comes off easily if you rub and roll the nut around between your hands.  To get just the pulp, rather than the full chestnuts, out its easiest to boil them for a good 40 minutes, without any precuts in the skin, and with a good dollop of oil in the water, then use the sharp tip of a carrot or potato peeler to breach the skin and swirl around/scrape out the pulp.  If you want the chestnuts free, whole, and uncooked (like for making Marrons Glacées), make a cut horizontally all the way around the chestnut, then steam for about 15 minutes.  Still a major pain in the butt, though!

Recipe for Chestnut Pudding: Made this with the first batch, and it is oh oh oh so yummy...
boil 500g of chestnut puree (boil chestnuts, squeeze out the pulp with the carrot peeler, squish any bigger pieces) in 500g of milk.  When it is good and pudding/porridge consistency (about 10-15 minutes i guess), take off the fire and add 150g of icing sugar, a sprinkle of cinnamon and a sprinkle of nutmeg.  Serve warm as a pudding, or save in a jar in the fridge to eat as is or use for a doughnut or crepe filling.

Today was another very productive day -- the inventory of the day is: 3kg of chestnuts roasted peeled and in the freezer for addition to winter soups and such, 5 apple pies (4 in the freezer and 1 on the table), 2 loaves of bread, one big batch of pumpkin soup, half for the table half for the freezer, and a bunch of meatballs...was almost too pooped to come and write the blog, but i figured that binning the first sunday after promising to write every sunday was just too pathetic, so found my second wind and here I am!

The work of the farmer's wife

So Gab spends the day out hoeing and raking and weeding and digging and chopping and sowing and cutting and picking and pruning etc etc etc.  But when his work is done, mine is just beginning.  Its my job to cook and stew and jam and pack and boil and sterilize and dehydrate and blanch and freeze and and and...And I Love It!  Really, I do!  I was worried it would be overwhelming, too much to do and all within a limited timeframe because otherwise everything rots and all Gab's work will have been for nought.  But its not overwhelming, its actually very relaxing and calming.  There's tons to do and the only way to get through it is to do it, so its very zen in that way -- just go with the flow, pick those beans and pod those peas and skin those tomatoes until there are none left to do.  Its even more fun with company, and I really think we have lost something grand when we stopped sitting on the front porch with all the neighbours gossiping and shelling peas.

Anyway, so here is a quick run down of all the cooking and putting away I've done over the last few months with links to the best recipes I've discovered in the process...in order of appearance...

First came the cherries.  About 10kg of black cherries was made into abou 10 jars of jam and 2 pies.  Then 40kgs of sour cherries was made into 10 traditional lattice cherry pies (in the freezer)...the BEST cherry pie recipe ever: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Classic-Sour-Cherry-Pie-with-Lattice-Crust-242514, and I mean EVER...even better than the cherry pah from the Matawa café..., then I burned about 30 jars of cherry jam.  Damn Damn Damn...took about 6 hours to pit the cherries for that batch of jam (even with my awesome cherry pitter machine: http://www.chefscatalog.com/product/93600-leifheit-cherry-stoner.aspx), and I BURNED it.  URG!!!  And the last 15kg went into a fermentation vat, and produced approximately 12 litres of sour cherry grappa...mmmmmmmmm

Then came the peas and beans -- peas were not nearly enough, and we ate them as they arrived, and we know to plant more next year and to treat them differently as well, because they should have been much more productive.  But the beans though...they started giving in June, and still haven't really stopped yet.  I have about 5 big jars of spicy pickled beans put away (bring vinegar to boil with a spice bag with cinnamon stick, mustard seeds, corriander seeds, black pepper corns, and some spicy chillis, blanch beans in vinegar, jar up, cover with boiling vinegar, and seal), and about 20kg of blanched green beans in the freezer for use throughout the winter.  And we eat fresh beans at least three times a week...yum yum yum....

The borlotti we pulled up when they were full and hung the plants to dry, and then once dry, shelled them all, and we have about 3kg of dried borlottis away in glass jars -- that was ALOT of work for not many calories. But they are gooood calories, though, and Mia helped me -- we had fun picking away at them all day long.

Then the along came the plums...from one little teensy Santa Rosa tree we got about 90kg of plums. They were quite literally coming out of my ears.  I made about 60 jars of plum jam, in three different batches and variations, sliced and froze about 5kg, and hot packed whole another 20 jars.  And we still had flats upon crates upon boxes of plums...time to visit the neighbours!  Everybody got the gift of plums this year...Then about 2 weeks after the santa rosa's finished, the damsons came.  With these I made another 20 some jars of jam, some with fresh ginger, and about 18 jars of a FANTASTIC plum ketchup: http://www.food.com/recipe/plum-ketchup-64525 -- excellent as a barbecue sauce, a marinade, and a stir frying sauce, as well as just as ketchup.

And then peppers -- the sweet lombards are pickled and away in jars together with the spicy ones -- I didn't know they were different at the first fruiting, and put them in together...eee, spicy!!  And then loads chopped up in the freezer, and loads pan fried for dinner.  There are about 5kg of classic bell peppers, green and red, in chunks in the freezer waiting for winter stir fries.

In the midst of all this, the herbs are coming and going, so we have bags and bags of parsley, mint, sage, basil and dill chopped and frozen, ready to use.  The basil has come to harvest strength five times this summer, each time we've taken about 2 or 3 crates full -- each crate makes about 1.5kg of pesto (and about 100g of pesto will do for pasta for 4 or 5 people), so I have about 10kg of pesto in the freezer along with tons of just plain chopped basil ready to use, and we gave tons of both basil and parsely to Angelo and his restaurant.  My fave is pesto with walnuts instead of pine nuts.mmmmm

Tomatoes went through 4 proper harvests, but the beefeaters and cherries didn't do so great.  The first beefeater crop was nice, but it didn't do anything afterwards. The Principe borghese were our king crop of tomatoes, and with these (about 10-15kg per harvest) I have put away about 30litres of tomato purée, about 10 litres of tomato sauce, about 8 bottles of whole canned cherry tomatoes, and about 12 bottles of tomato ketchup (super duper yummy -- it will actually run out soon because we go through about a bottle every 2 weeks, and when it does, I don't know how we'll go back to the store bought kind).  Next year we need more tomatoes, and bigger saucier ones.

And in the meantime, we are getting a really generous crop of aubergines (eggplants) which neither of us actually like very much, so what to do with them all?? First we gave away tons, then I learned an awesome recipe for chutney, and made an aubergine apple and fig chutney that is to die for.  Have about 8 jars of that.  Then I pickled a bunch with sweetened spicy vinegar, about 6 jars of that.  And the rest we made into soups and rattatouille to eat right away -- changed my mind about aubergines, and now I'm kind of sad they are almost finished.  I'll put the last of them away in the freezer so we can bring them out for soups and stews in the winter.

The zukes made TONS but we ate them ALL as tiny babies as soon as they were ready -- worried about the classic "too many zucchinis and nobody wants them" problem, we solved this by eating TONS of zucchini flowers, and loads of grilled and stir fried zuchinis picked when they were no bigger than 10cm.  Sweeeeeet.

Also overloaded with potatoes, from the earlies to the maincrops -- we've given away loads, eaten loads, and have about 40kg in the cellar and still another 2 or 3 rows still in the garden.  And that was after wild boards made off with about half the potato crop.  They made off with ALL of our sweet corn, so the potatoes should count themselves lucky.

Phewff -- its almost more work to talk about all the stuff we've harvested and put away than it was to do it in the first place...I'm getting kind of tired of this post, and I still haven't mentioned the figs (40 jars jam), the pumpkins (puree in freezer, pieces in freezer, and 13 pumpkins in dry storage), the apples (20 jars apple sauce, 4 crates in dry storage, 3 cakes in freezer, and chutney still to come), the pears (10 jars pear sauce, just like apple sauce), peaches (12 jars jam, 8kg pieces in freezer, 2 cobblers in freezer), blackberries...so much work to pick, so little yield...all in freezer...

And now the chestnuts begin...made chestnut jam last week and just the thought of it makes my knees weak...mmmm...but they are so HARD to peel and prep.  Hours and hours and hours of work for a kilo or two of pulp.  UGH.

OK, enough enough already...I'm tired, its lunchtime, and today there are another 5kg of chestnuts to go through and the apple chutney to get underway....

Inspired by Ken & Nicole Barker's blog (http://barkersfarm.wordpress.com) on their newly started organic farm experience, i am from here on going to be more regular and less exhaustive with the posts -- they are blogging every sunday, and I think that's a great idea!  So from now on, every sunday I'll try and post, whatever has happened that week!

A day in the life of a raw milk lover

Raw milk RULES.  If harvested and stored hygienically, from healthy, well fed and well kept cows,  it is perfectly safe.  And when it comes raw, it comes with all the components for making every type of dairy product.  When its sterilized, the good bacteria go with the bad, and it is no longer usable for anything but drinking (unless you add bacteria from another source).  

Italy has among the most intense food hygiene regulations in the world -- the UK reacted to BSE after 20,000 or so infected beasts were confirmed.  Germany and france reacted at around 4,000 or more.  Italy was freaking out with a country wide beef on the bone ban instantly without debate over just 2 infected cows.   Angelo had to pay a fine of 2,000 euros because the sanitary ceramic tile in his kitchen was only 2m high up the wall instead of 2.12m.  Food delivery is not the norm because the regulations for carrying food are so strict -- pizza guy on a motor scooter is not so easy here, so mostly people make do with take away.  And yet raw milk is available in every community, large or small, from automatic dispensers that fulfill the sanitary requirments for safety.  Raw milk is NOT illegal in Canada because it is hazardous -- in the 30s, without consistent refrigeration and with little public information on germs and hygiene, maybe.  But not anymore.

So here is what I do once a week.  I go to the raw milk dispenser just down the hill in Salo.  Every morning at about 6am, after the morning milking, the farmer brings the milk -- he removes the leftover old milk, (which is then pasteurized, bottled and sold to the supermarkets -- yes, you pay more for the seconds) sanitizes the tank, and places the new milk.  The new milk stays at perfect temperature, perfectly safe and sanitary.

I buy 20litres of milk from the distributor, and at 1 euro per litre instead of 1.60 from the supermarket, and the farmer gets all of that money.  If I went all the way to Gavardo, closer to the farmer (5km away), the dispenser costs only 60c per litre.

5 litres of my milk goes into the fridge for fresh consumption.  5 litres goes into the pot for processing into yogurt and soft cheese, and 10 litres goes into the pot for processing "aging" cheese.  I get 5l of milk to drink, 3l of yogurt to eat, 1 pot of cottage cheese and 1 pot of soft spreadable cheese, and 2 harder cheeses for slicing, grating, and eating just like that.  Oh, and with no packaging to throw away.

Making yogurt and cheese with nothing but milk:
(ever wonder how they made cheese before all this wonderful and poisonous factory farming? )
With raw milk, you can use the bacteria in the milk itself for all of these processes, eliminating the need for adding yogurt bacterias or rennet or other assistants to the coagulation -- the bacteria does the work itself.  To do this, you first need to make "latte inesto", or inocculated milk.  Bring the milk to 61 degrees.  This kills off the bacteria that you don't want, and leaves the bacteria that you do want -- the thermophyllics (or resistant to heat) stay, and these are the base of all italian cheeses.  If you heat any more, you will start to pasteurize and lose the good bacteria as well.

Allow the milk to cool just to 40 degrees, then isolate it (wrap in a towel or blanket) to keep the warmth in and store in a warm place overnight -- I use the oven with the light on.  10 hours later you will have yogurt, with no other ingredients at all.  The consistency is kind of custard-like. (and I prefer pudding like, so I usually make it with added bacterial culture after pasteurizing, as below).  You can eat this like yogurt, put it in the fridge and it will solidify more, but the consistency is not what we are used too.  If you take this yogurt and simply heat it until it separates, you get cheese.  The hotter you heat it, the bigger and firmer the kibblets of cheese, so the more like cottage cheese.  If you heat it just hot enough that it separates, you get a softer spreadable cheese.  Once separated, spoon into a cheesecloth lined collander to drain, and hang for a few hours.  The longer it hangs, the drier and harder the cheese product.  lasts for about 2 weeks in the fridge.

Making yogurt and cheese with pasteurized milk and added bacteria 
For the sad Canadian readers under the regime of the evil milk marketing board (doesn't it just make you think of big steely cavernous government buildings a la orwell or clockwork orange? but maybe with cows behind the clerks wickets...), alas the above is not possible.

But also, for yogurt in the pudding consistency that i like, the yogurt has to be pasteurized first, so you have a clean slate, and then you add only the bacteria you want to grow in the milk.  I use greek yogurt with live bacteria. It makes nice thick and creamy yogurt.  Then, of course, once you have the mother batch, you can use your own yogurt to make the next batch.  It will eventually weaken (yogurt inbreeding...) and you will need to add fresh, but it will go for a few rounds.

To pasteurize raw milk, I bring it to 71 degrees C and there it stays for 30 seconds before removing from the fire.  For yogurt, do the same as described above, let cool to 40 degrees, then add your live yogurt bacteria (for 5 litres, I add about 1l of greek yogurt), then isolate with a towel and keep warm overnight in the lighted closed oven.

With the resultant yogurt the next morning, again you can make cottage cheese and soft cheese just by heating it, as described for the raw milk process above.

Making hard(er) cheese with either raw or pasteurised milk
To make a cheese you can slice rather than spread, you really do need rennet.  Without rennet, you can just up the heat for your overnight bucket of yogurt -- put the oven on at 55 degrees -- then next morning drain in a cheese mould basket for a day, and you will have a decent sliceable cheese without rennet, but its not ideal.

For traditional farmhouse italian cheese, heat the milk to 38 degrees, add the right portion of rennet (depends on the type of rennet and how much milk.  leave 40 minutes.  Cut the curd.  heat to 45 degrees.  let sit for 5 minutes. Spoon curd into cheese mould baskets and leave drain for about 5 hours.  Turn out onto a cheese board, and leave to air dry, turning every day, for about a week to 10 days.  you can rub salt into the outside of the cheese on the second day.  Then just keep in a cool dry place, turning every few days, until you want to eat it.  If mould forms outside, just brush/scrub it off.

The canadian controversy over raw milk
Thanks to my mom for the link to this article that got me out and defending raw milk.  The comments after the article are all very interesting.
 http://thetyee.ca/News/2011/01/24/MilkWarriors/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=240111,

Signing off because we are taking a roasted chicken up to the little farm for a picnic and some leaf raking and jumping.  Gab's been up all week pruning and cutting paths in the woods and generally winter maintenance.  next week we should get our load of shit to spread in the orchard, yahoo!  Also next week the pick-up comes (its a three wheeled piaggio Ape Max...too cool!  Ours is white) and the specialist will come up to see about hooking up the electricity and setting up a well and the water tanks.

I can have POUTINE!! YAYAYAY

I just figured out how to make proper squeeky cheese curds -- of course unheard of here -- so as soon as i've lost the target 20lbs and am off this stinking sucky diet, I will be eating POUTINE!  Hooray!

So here's how to make Squeaky Cheese Curds:
heat a couple of gallons of milk (I did a batch with 12litres, and made most into cheese but kept about 1/3 of it aside for this experiment ) to 38 degrees (celcius), add the appropriate amount of rennet (depending on how much milk and depending on your rennet) and leave until the curd forms, about 30 minutes.

Cut the curd (just google instructions on how to cut curd) in to squares about 2cm, heat slowly up to 60 degrees stirring constantly -- its the stirring combined with the heat that keeps the curd pieces separate and allows a little crust to form on each piece for the squeaky effect.

Allow to cool down, drain the curds and run hot water over will stirring them in the strainer.

Salt and serve...yummmm!  Nice and squeaky, they feel and taste just like curds should, but I haven't tried with the fries and gravy yet, so don't know if they will melt right...we'll just have to see!!

Autumn recipes

There's been quite a gap in posts -- I was hoping the next post would be all about our new farm and how we found it and how gorgeous it is and when we get to move in etc.  Nope, not to be.  Its not as easy as all that!  We've found a few places, but they've all fallen through for one reason or another (one was snatched away from us, after it should have been ours, by a guy willing to pay cash in the black...that so sucked!) so we just keep on looking. And now I'm resigned to the search taking its time, I can't wait until we have a farm to make the next post!

But, you don't need a farm to eat local all year round, though.  I don't have my farm yet, but lots of other folks have theirs, and the abundant harvests of late summer and autumn make for cheap and plentiful veggies and fruits by the case or by the crate, so now i trawl the farmers markets looking for good excess harvest deals in bulk.

I was really expecting the canning and preserving and such to be a horrid nightmare of work and sweat and tomato peels in everything, but actually its lots of fun.  I've so far put up 20kg of tomatoes, 11kg of apples, and 6kg of figs.  And its so satisfying to see the shelf in the cellar fill up with jars of delicious fresh local and cheap food that I made myself and that will sustain us through the winter.  Well, its not anywhere near enough to sustain us through the winter, but its a start!

To can tomatoes, boil them first, about one minute.  Then dump them in a sink full of cold cold water, and the peels just slip right off.  The flesh kind of pops out of the skin, easy peasy.  Then cut them in chunks and heat to boiling. Boil for about 3 minutes, then put them in jars.  Make sure the mouth is clean, and twist on the lids. At this point the recipes differ -- most people I know turn them upside down, and the air is pushed out and the seal pops in as the jar cools down.  This is usually enough for tomatoes because they are pretty acidic, but not all tomatoes are acidic enough, so it could be risky.  You could add citric acid to bring up the acidity if you are not sure how acid they are, or you could proceed with the totally sure hot water bath canning method instead of turning them upside down.  Plop the jars into a canner with water covering them by at least a couple of centimeters over the lid, then boil continuously for about 40 minutes.  Ugh, that's a bit of a pain, but its not actually work, just waiting.  John Seymour has an alternative method using the oven instead of the boiling water, but I haven't tried that yet, and honestly i find it a bit scary...

For the apples, I made half into apple sauce and the other half into apple jam.  I was going to make jelly, and then I read the recipe...ugh!  you have to let it drain all night in a jelly bag, that's a pain in the butt!  And I like jam better anyway!  The apple sauce is really easy, just peel, core and section the apples (this would be hard without an apple corer sectioner thingy, I bought one right away before starting!), then cook 'em.  A bit of water in the bottom of the pot so they don't stick, and cook 'em till they're soft.  Then if you like it fine, whizz 'em or put them through a mill, but i like it chunky, so just squish with a potato masher.  Then can as with the tomatoes.  Apples are more acidic than tomatoes, so the upside down should work better, but I boiled em in the canner for 40 minutes just to be safe.

The jam was just 4kg cored, peeled, sectioned apples cooked with 1kg of sugar and 200gms of brown sugar, a big shake of cinnamon, and cook and cook and cook.  I used a candy thermometer and brought it over 200f (it will splat everywhere, so I used a splatter guard cover thingie -- dishtowel works too, but is a bit cumbersome), then in the jars and upside down, and away it went.  I like to use less sugar in my jam, and find that, depending on the fruit, I can substitute cooking time for sugar and pectin.  If I cook it longer and hotter, it boils down and thickens enough anyway, even with little sugar and no added pectin.  Not that there's anything wrong with pectin -- its a naturally occuring thing, not an icky chemical additive, i just have trouble finding it here so do without.

Now its coming up on pumpkin time, so I'm getting ready for soups and pies.  We made a huge batch of pumpkin gnocchi this weekend, deeeeelicious!  I prepare pumpkin puree by baking the pumpkin until its good and soft, then i just scoop it out, and its ready to use or put in plastic bags in the freezer.

Gab's off to see another property this afternoon, so still keeping optimistic, but in the meantime, there's still plenty to learn and do and experiment with...all will come in its own good time!