Found food

Each time we go to the mountains, I find something new.

Once, it was grapes. Then, I discovered edible violets and dandelion greens. Recently, the dogs were crunching tiny berries all over the ground – they turned out to be wild cherries, little buttons of chewy, raisin-like sweetness wrapped around a big pit. Not good for much more than a novelty chew, but pretty tasty for the moment they last (and the dogs actually chewed the pits!)

This trip, I found chestnuts.

Most of what I know about chestnuts comes from the song – roasting on an open fire and all that. So I looked them up and discovered I was right to gather up bags of them, foraging beneath the shady tree. Roasted, they are delicious, with a creamy, lightly nutty flavor.

Another of nature’s armored fruits, chestnuts come in a prickly package: wrapped in big green balls that look like sea urchins, or tiny porcupines, covered in needle-sharp, short spines. Wear gloves.

Or, look for the seeds – the actual chestnuts we might recognize roasting on stands in New York City, or in the produce section at the specialty food store – littering the ground. They are a deep brown color, a little bigger than an almond shell and impossibly smooth, the sort of thing you put in your pocket for later, so you can reach in and stroke its surface like a good luck token. I gathered an enormous bag of them, compelled by their simple beauty, one discovery leading to another and another, clutches of perfect little nuts hiding in the grass like misshaped Easter eggs.

Back home in the kitchen, I processed the nuts in a fall ritual that I’m sure has been repeated countless times – and here, again, for the first time. I arranged the nuts on a cookie sheet, smooth, flat side down, scored an “X” on top of each one to let steam escape, and put them in the oven at about 350.

Turns out the X’s weren’t big enough, and a couple of the nuts exploded. Kapow. Nut meats all over the oven. So I turned off the oven, let the nuts cool just enough to re-score, then cooked them some more. Trial and error. In all, the nuts should cook about 30 minutes.

Then, they cool again, but not too much: they have to be warm for peeling. When they were ready, I sat down at the table with a bowl for the peeled nuts and another for the shells and set to work. An hour later, I had probably three pounds of chestnuts.

I’d found an old recipe for chestnut soup online (its origins were actually Gourmet magazine, circa 1978) and another recipe for chestnut cookies, which I made a couple of days later. The soup was fantastic, rich and creamy autumn in a bowl. The cookies were savory and, well, okay. They are reminiscent of Italian wedding cookies, and I think would have been fabulous with a little more salt and maybe some lemon in there somewhere.

Next year, I’ll try another recipe – because now this ritual is my own.

Here’s the soup recipe – and a couple notes on the cookies, which can be found at the link above: Don’t roll them in sugar until AFTER they are out of the oven (scraping powdered sugar off this dough is tedious, as I discovered. Oops). Also, enjoy the meditative quality of rolling buttery dough between your palms – and then smelling like butter for the rest of the afternoon.

Chestnut Soup Thanks to epicurious.com and Gourmet

• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup finely chopped celery
• 1/2 cup finely chopped carrot
• 1/2 cup finely chopped onion
• 3 fresh flat-leaf parsley sprigs (I used the remnants of curly-leaf parsley from the garden)
• 2 whole cloves
• 1 Turkish or 1/2 California bay leaf (what? There’s a difference? I used what I had)
• 6 cups low-sodium chicken broth (used my homemade broth from Weathertop Farm chickens)
• 1 (14- to 15-ounce) jar peeled cooked whole chestnuts, crumbled (3 cups)  (Ha! Used fresh ones!)
• 1/4 cup Sercial Madeira (thanks, Norah, for the loan)
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Melt butter in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over low heat, then stir in celery, carrot, and onion. Cover surface of vegetables with a buttered round of wax paper or parchment (buttered side down) and cover pan with lid, then sweat vegetables 15 minutes (to soften). I didn’t do this, as I had no waxed paper! Just let the veggies cook a bit on their own.

Wrap parsley, cloves, and bay leaf in cheesecloth and tie into a bundle with string to make a bouquet garni. My first bouquet garni! Felt very retro.

Discard buttered paper from vegetables, then add broth and bouquet garni and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, covered, 20 minutes. Add chestnuts and Madeira and simmer, covered, 3 minutes. At this point it doesn’t look much like soup, but wait for the next step…

Purée soup in small batches (4 or 5) in a blender until smooth (use caution when blending hot liquids), transferring to a 3- to 4-quart heavy saucepan. Stir in cream, pepper, and salt to taste and reheat soup over moderate heat, stirring occasionally.

Makes about 8 cups.