Posted by Trott

My first selection of chestnuts for roasting turned out—and, as Dave Barry would say, I swear I'm not making this up—to be poisonous. (See the last few paragraphs of the previous post for details.) My second attempt at roasted chestnuts turned out much better. After more than one failed attempt to find chestnuts to purchase, I finally found them at Falletti's near the Golden Gate Park panhandle.

This time around, instead of being bitter like the poison horse chestnuts, the roasted chestnuts were surprisingly sweet. To me, they tasted a bit like sugar-sweetened tuna, although obviously the texture was unlike that of tuna.

The same day, I made toasted squash seeds and toasted sunflower seeds. When I've made these things in the past, just winging it rather than following a recipe in The Joy of Cooking, I would toast them for a short while. This time around, they toasted for an hour or more. And the squash seeds were simmered in water for two hours first. This seemed like a lot of preparation for some simple snacks. But I have to say it all paid off. They were delicious and much nuttier with this slower, longer toasting treatment.

Labels: joy of cooking