Matthew Nistico

Jon Ashley Mills wrote:Pan fried with gnocchi, cepes and celery leaves.

What are "cepes"?

George Ingles wrote:Tonight, I ate the first Chestnuts we have harvested from our trees!...  They are not like a typical Nut so much -- more like bread/potato/squash.

No, whereas most tree nuts are largely fats and proteins, chestnuts are starchy.  They also have good fiber content compared to other tree nuts.  I've read that chestnuts' nutrition profile is similar to that of brown rice.  This is why permies get excited about chestnuts as a perennial tree crop that could serve as a dietary staple.  If only we could grow a whole bunch more of them.  And defeat the chestnut weevil, which would have a field day in this hypothetical permie utopia.

There are, of course, other trees that already fill the same role of perennial calorie crop, but they are all tropical species like breadfruit and plantain.  Chestnuts are cool-temperate trees.

Regarding their role as a staple starch, several posters above have noted the European tradition of making pasta from chestnut flour.  While I've never tasted it, I would be excited to try.  But I'm not rushing to spend my time grinding up dried chestnuts, either.  Unless and until chestnut flour becomes widely and inexpensively available, it seems to me that roasted chestnuts incorporated whole into recipes are perfectly tasty and a lot less work.

Nota bene: upon a very cursory review of Amazon, I see imported Italian chestnut flour for just over $1/oz.  This is 5x the cost of the cheapest almond flour I see for sale, and more than 10x the cost of the cheapest organic whole wheat flour.

Chestnuts feature in one of my favorite Autumn recipes: Pumpkin Gnocchi in a Brandy Cream Sauce.  It is a fairly simple and straight forward recipe, but to do it my way does require an air frier.  You could adapt this procedure to bake in an oven, but it will take longer.

I buy pre-shelled and -roasted chestnuts, which are just too convenient to pass up.  I can also often find them cheap at a local discount store, but even at full price (you can buy in bulk on Amazon) they are worth it.  Starting with fresh chestnuts, you would want to roast as people have described above: cut an X into the base of each nut, bake in the oven (I think 350 for up to 30 mins should do it), then cool and peel the shells off before assembling ingredients for this recipe:

Cut a small sugar pumpkin into wedges, then cut the shell and the guts off of each wedge, then cut the remaining pumpkin flesh into 1" cubes.  Toss with melted butter until coated.  Cook in a preheated air frier at 380F degrees for 18 minutes.

Meanwhile, boil a package of gnocchi until just done, skimming the gnocchi out of the water as they begin to float.  Set aside and keep warm.

Thinly slice a large shallot and sauté in a good bit of butter.  Add chiffonade of fresh sage (how many sage leaves?  A bunch.  More than you think you need) and continue cooking until wilted and just starting to brown.  You want the butter lightly brown as well.  Season well with salt, white pepper, and some grated nutmeg.  Deglaze the pan with a generous amount of good brandy or cognac.  Add a few glugs of heavy cream - not too much; the finished sauce should be pale brown, not white.  Simmer until the sauce thickens sufficiently - I like it halfway thick, but if you prefer a thinner sauce, that's fine too - then stir in a handful of grated Parmigiano cheese.  Taste and adjust seasoning (I often find myself adding more salt, pepper, and brandy).

Toss the gnocchi and a nearly equal volume of roast chestnuts in the cream sauce.  Then add the pumpkin bites, tossing them very gently into the sauce so as not to mush them completely.

Serve hot.  I typically serve preceded by a simple, green leaf salad and accompanied by a full-bodied white wine, such as a good chardonnay or viognier.  Or perhaps, if you prefer, with a sweeter wine, such as a Riesling.

Mary Cook wrote:But I agree that USDA is very conservative

Yes, USDA.  Not FDA, as I had written.  Sorry.

Mary Cook wrote:But 45 years ago, local women here in West Virginia told me they just canned tomatoes and jams "open kettle," meaning you got the contents boiling, the jars in boiling water, filled the jars and sealed them and you were done. And I did it that way for years with no ill effects.

Yep.  That is how I do it now, also without ill effects.  Though between us, our sample size of two is hardly a conclusive experiment.  Nonetheless, that is how it has been done for centuries.  I put my trust in the wisdom of ages.  People of past generations may have embraced many non-scientific beliefs, but they weren't stupid - they usually figured out pretty well what practices were and were not safe.

Because I currently only have a single cooking eye, which will be occupied with the boiling jam, I instead sterilize my jars by baking them at 250 during the last 30 minutes of the jam boil.

Mary Cook wrote:Leigh--I question the "ripens before frost, therefore astringent" part. I think frost is irrelevant to the question of ripening and astringency, and that astringency means it isn't ripe. For the wild trees, even the ones in the open that have branches closer to the ground, most persimmons need to be picked up off the ground--and USUALLY their being on the ground means they're ripe. Not all, but you can generally tell because the ripe ones are orange and soft. For me, I have gotten the runs after eating persimmons off the ground, so now I use persimmon only cooked--baked actually, as my three recipes all involve baking. The grafted ones are significantly bigger and have fewer or no seeds. This is one of the things I'm wondering about the Asian ones--do they have similar seeds? I also wonder if there are any hybrids with much larger fruit than American ones but hardy to zone 6.

I agree that, with American persimmons, I only ever pick fruit from the ground.  And doing so even before the first frost usually provides ripe enough fruit free from astringency.  It's not 100%, but it's good enough.  After colder weather sets in, then its about a 100% guarantee.  I've never gotten the runs before doing this, but then I am blessed with a mostly bullet-proof immune system.

And yes, from what I understand, American-Asian hybrids should do well for you.  I am just planting mine, but I am very excited about them.  Some have more American-type fruit quality, others more Asian-type fruit quality.  But with all hybrids the idea is to combine the tree and fruit characteristics of Asian persimmons with the cold-hardiness of American persimmons.  One of the more commonly available hybrid cultivars is Nikita's Gift, which is advertised as suitable for Zones 5-10.  Which means one should be able to grow it confidently in Zones 6-9.

Check out this excellent podcast to learn all about hybrid persimmons: Orchard People Podcast ep93

Em Nichols wrote:Out of desperation after 4 years of debilitating pain, I went full carnivore - meat, bacon, butter, eggs, salt and milk. Within three days my pain disappeared. 30 Days into carnivore, I started adding avocado, cucumber and zucchini.  I felt fantastic. I was so happy that I discovered a way of eating that worked for me, and I am able to source a good amount of what we eat from our homestead. That's the point, right?  

Well, the holidays came and mama likes her stuffing, potatoes and gravy!  I need to go back full carnivore. It's cheap, I feel FANTASTIC on it and it is SO easy.  There is very little food waste at all because I don't have to buy a bunch of weird ingredients to make full meals.  Oh, that's another thing - I was eating one meal a day!  I was so full and I wasn't hungry.  If I wanted a snack, I would eat bacon or pork rinds.

Easy. Cheap. Ability to provide 90% of what we ate from what we already produce. Effective.  It is perfect for me.

Great to hear that this diet works for you.  It definitely qualifies as a "simple diet," as you've eliminated the majority of common foodstuffs.  I have a friend for whom a similar diet has also worked well.  I don't feel the need to experiment with it myself, as I already feel great as a health-focused but fairly conventional omnivore.  I assume you eat seafood as well?

I must say, though, that it seems hard to imagine the full carnivore diet as inexpensive for those who don't raise their own animals.  Meat from the store is expensive, though probably even less so than it would be in a fair, unsubsidized market.

Megan Palmer wrote:

Tereza Okava wrote:I cook a persimmon "jam" (more like a compote) just enough to make it stable in the fridge for a week, so my husband can throw it into his oatmeal every morning.

In NZ, water bathing is the most common method of preserving, pressure canning is not the norm.   Your compotes sound like perfect candidates for water bathing and the fruit would only need to be barely softened enough to fit into the jars easily as they would continue to cook in the water bath.

Our pantry is well stocked with peach, apricot, apple, rhubarb compotes that are over a year old that do not have any added sugar in them - if the jar lid bulges or there are signs of bubbles, I wouldn’t eat them but touch wood, that is yet to happen to me.

Wow, I am amazed at your track record with successfully water-bath canning compotes.  Conventional wisdom says that you can only safely can food that has either sufficiently low pH (acidic foods) or sufficiently high sugar content (preserves).

Now, I do recognize that the official version of food safety here in the US is extremely conservative.  For example, the FDA verdict is that all jams must be water-bath canned.  Whereas many Europeans react to this with puzzlement.  They simply ladle boiling jam into sterilized jars and set them in the cupboard, no canning required.  And they've been doing it that way for centuries.  I no longer can all of my jams and, like you, I've had nothing but good results - but my jams still have a bunch of added sugar in them!  Unlike your compotes, presumably.

Tereza Okava wrote:When I was in college my housemate, an electrical engineer, relied heavily on his "vulcan nature" and decided it would be so much more logical and would save so much time to simply eat one food, preferably something minimal prep. This was, of course, before the tech people were reviving soylent green-- I don't know who their main shareholders are but I'd not be surprised to see him there.
In any case, for the entire 3 years I knew him he ate peanut butter sandwiches with grape jelly. We occasionally would all go out and he'd eat normal college student food, and he didn't pass up a beer or three, but otherwise it was PBJ. Seemed to do him good, even. Go figure!

Unfortunately, 3 years is not an adequate timeframe for a truly revealing experiment in chronic malnutrition.  And it sounds like his diet was not even as nutritionally lacking as it might have been.  Did he drink milk with his PB&J?  A classic combo, after all, and milk goes a long way to rectifying any deficiencies.  Even just using whole grain bread and occasionally varying the type of fruit jam would go a long way towards making this a complete diet.

Provided it is given enough calories, the human body can synthesize many of the compounds it needs to continue operating, even on a nutritionally limited diet.  People living at a subsistence level in many different environments and cultures and historical periods maintained themselves on a similarly limited and unvarying diet: a handful of staples with only the rarest of variety added.

That does not mean such a diet provides optimal nutrition for optimal health.  You can survive like that without developing acute deficiencies.  You can even thrive like that, for a time.  But given a long enough window of observation, detrimental impacts of such a limited diet will tell.

Zach Moreau wrote:In your own words, you are describing foods that are not "easily palatable" in their raw state. This is a clue that they are not the ideal foods for humans.

An intriguing point!

Carla Burke wrote:You've answered your own question, Matthew. Jam is shelf stable. Unpreserved fruit is not.

It all depends on total sugar content.  In theory, raw fruit pulp with sufficient sugar would keep.  Like I said, perhaps American persimmon pulp qualifies, but I don't know and have not demonstrated it.  And probably don't particularly care to try.

I will say this, though: I scavenge my persimmons from a public tree (I have one of my own, but it is still small) and pick everything windfall off of the ground.  Many of those fruit have likely lain on the ground for a good while before I get to them.  Some get smushed, some dry up and become mummies, some succumb to ants.  But I have never seen a moldy persimmon where I forage.

I don't think they do mold.  I think they have too much sugar.

Zach Moreau wrote:I eat a raw vegan diet...  Eating a simple diet is very important for maintaining good health. Our bodies digest whole foods much better than processed foods with a paragraph-long ingredient list.

A good point about whole foods vs highly processed foods, but I don't believe you are using the phrase "simple diet" the same way as the OP intended.

Zach Moreau wrote:Digestion is the most metabolically expensive process our bodies undergo, so the less energy we expend on digestion, the more we have for other important functions like growth and repair.

I am not following your logic here.  Yes, digestion is metabolically expensive.  That is why we cook food.  So, why do you follow a raw diet if you're concerned with metabolic efficiency?

Cooking many foods improves their taste and texture in the opinions of most people, and it can make some difficult-to-eat foods - the kinds you have to chew for five minutes just to eat them raw - more easily palatable.  But the primary benefit of cooking food is to increase energy available to the body.  This has always been the primary benefit, whether primitive humans first adopting the habit of cooking consciously realized it or not.

Here is an illustrative example using numbers I just made up: a beef steak contains 1000 calories of energy.  But the body must dedicate 500 calories in order to digest it - all of those proteins are hard to break down.  By breaking down its constituent molecules a little bit in advance with heat, we reduce the caloric value of a cooked steak to 900 calories, but the body now only requires 300 calories to digest it.  Thus, the net value in energy available to the metabolism is INCREASED by cooking the steak, from 500 calories to 600.