After spending a good part of my Sunday tearing my fingernails off trying to extract the chestnut from its hard shell, I think I can safely safe that boiling chestnuts is for suckers.
Joy of Cooking advised cutting an X in the flat side of each shell…
and boiling them for five minutes, which is supposed to make the shell pliable enough to tear away from the nut. I didn’t find this to be the case. It was a major pain iremoving the shell; my thumb and index finger actually throb trying to type these words right now! I much prefer the roasting method, which was so much easier. (Our yard is full of chestnuts come fall.)
Thankfully, I was making chestnut pesto, which I cobbled together from some pine nut pesto recipes and tweaked a bit. Pesto doesn’t call for many nuts so what remained of my fingers were spared.
Chestnut Pesto
- 4 ounces chestnuts, cooked and peeled
- 3 ounces goat cheese
- 2 garlic cloves, chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
- 2 bunches Italian parsley
- Juice of 1/2 lemon
- 3/4 cup good quality olive oil
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Jake’s special crust???…hmmm…I believe there is a brick oven evening in the making…
Okay, I was trying to be modest. Jake’s crust is the bomb! (Though it’s not brick oven bomb. Only you hold that title, Thom.
).
Forget the x part: Take your pruners and cut those nuts in half. Then put them in a microwave-safe dish and zap them, covered, for a few minutes with a little water. The nutmeats will jump out of the shells without any of the papery membrane clinging to them. So tasty for snacking or preserving as nuts in syrup or chestnut puree.