Episode Transcript is as follows:
Nina Furstenau: You’re listening to Canned Peaches. I’m Nina Mukerjee Furstenau.
We’re trekking through farms, forests and faraway kitchens exploring five ingredients.
Come with us - to discover how communities locally and globally are intertwined through food.
ANCHOR INTRO
Nina Furstenau: Chestnuts have phased out of American culture over the last hundred years[1] or so. We don’t think of them as a big part of our diet anymore. But yet farmers are selling out of chestnuts, year after year?[2] Somebody, somewhere, can’t get enough of chestnuts.
In this episode, we’re going in search of the communities that can’t get enough of chestnuts. We’re going in search of what it is that makes chestnuts a cultural cornerstone and how they could be making a comeback.
[Studio sounds]
Nina Furstenau: Here in the studio, I have with me producer Lauren Hines-Acosta. She reported on this episode.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: Hey, Nina.
Nina Furstenau: Hello.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: So, Nina, I bet I can guess what you’re thinking right now – at least when it comes to chestnuts.
Nina Furstenau: *reaction*
Lauren Hines-Acosta: It’s that Christmas song, isn’t it?
Nina Furstenau: *reaction & Nina starts singing “Chestnuts roasting…” then fade into the song
["The Christmas Song" sung by Nat King Cole]
Nina Furstenau: You were determined to NOT play that song, Lauren. What happened?
Lauren Hines-Acosta: I know I said I wasn’t going to play it, but it supports my next point. Because chestnuts are usually harvested in the fall, they’re on their last legs by winter. So roasting them for Thanksgiving or Christmas is a good way to make them last. I know you haven’t had a chestnut in years. Same with me. But then you had to try some doing this episode. What does one taste like or even look like?
Nina Furstenau: *answers*
Lauren Hines-Acosta: It seems not many people have tried a chestnut. I think I know why. That Christmas Song came out in 1946.[3] Chestnuts were a common part of people’s diets back then. But about 20 years after that song, American chestnut trees were mostly wiped out.[4]
Nina Furstenau: That’s right because in the early 20th century a fungal disease was accidently brought over from Asia.[5]
Lauren Hines-Acosta: Exactly. Chestnut trees grew along the Appalachian Mountains[6] and supported the rural and Indigenous communities in that area. But then the blight decimated the American chestnut tree population by 1925.[7] And now chestnuts are kind of this cultural echo with that song being one of the few remaining traces.
Nina Furstenau: So no one eats chestnuts anymore?
Lauren Hines-Acosta: Not exactly. When I called local chestnut tree farmers, they said they sell out every year – and fast. They grow a different chestnut that can withstand the blight. But still, these farmers don’t have enough left over to make other products like chestnut flour. So my question was, who’s buying up all these chestnuts?
[Sounds of Chestnut farm]
Nina Furstenau: Well, to find out, we went to Chestnut Charlie’s back in July. It’s a organic chestnut farm in Lawrence, Kansas [8] that supplies Whole Foods. It’s run by a couple – Debbie Milks and Charles NovoGradac. They gave us a tour of their farm.
[sounds of farm] & [sound of putting chestnuts on inspection tray]
Nina Furstenau: “This is the inside of the net?
Deborah Milks: “Yeah, of the burrs.”
Nina Furstenau: “Do you mind if I touch one?”
Deborah Milks: “No, go ahead.”
Nina Furstenau: “It feels like a little silky. Yeah, it's very smooth.”
Deborah Milks: “Yeah, and it feels I mean, these are now you know, 10 months old and they've been in the refrigerator, so they're not nearly as nice as when they're fresh. But”
Nina Furstenau: “The way it kind of the way it fits your thumb is interesting.”
Deborah Milks: “A little worry, stone?”
Nina Furstenau: “A worry stone. I could carry this.”
Deborah Milks: “It's yours.”
Nina Furstenau: “You're gonna be my new friend.”
Nina Furstenau: “I understand you might have a few people locally who really liked the fresh chestnuts and have been customers of yours.”
Deborah Milks: “We just did outreach, outreach, outreach, and spent hours explaining chestnuts, so and the people who did find us who already knew chestnuts, this is what I always love. You know, we would listen to the story, oh, my first experience with chestnuts I was in London or Rome, or Tokyo or, you know, and, you know, this kind of thing. And I always said, someday, someday, somebody's gonna be in Paris, and they're gonna see a chestnut vendor and they'll go, ‘Oh, the first time I had a roasted chestnut was in Lawrence, Kansas.’ I'm just waiting for that.”
Nina Furstenau: You’ve been at this a few years now.”
Deborah Milks: “So yeah. And, you know, you know, you have the group of people who we call the best customers we have are the people who speak English as a second language. People from Eastern Europe, people from Asia, all over Korea, Japan, China, and people from the Middle East, people from Turkey, they all know and love chestnuts, and it's still in their culture. And so when we're discovered by those groups, the word spreads. And, yeah.”
Nina Furstenau: “Why do you think it's mostly the groups of English as a second language communities? Is it because of this history of having the nuts more fruit more recently?”
Deborah Milks: “Yeah, I definitely do. I think with the death of the American Chestnut, we also lost that culture.”
Nina Furstenau: So, it seems it’s immigrant communities in Missouri, the Midwest and beyond that want chestnuts.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: Yes, and like Debbie said, it’s people particularly from Italy, China, Japan and Korea.[9] I went ahead and talked with Hyejung Kook. She’s Korean American and her husband is Chinese American. Their family has been customers of Debbie and Charles for the last 11 years.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: So yeah, tell me like, how did you find just that Charlie’s? What was that? Like?
Hyejung Kook: You know, my, my husband. We both love food. But he's the one that always manages to find stuff was I can't remember was just research online, or it might have been through some other Chinese friend. But he found Chestnut Charlie's. And so we decided to order. And we're in we're in Kansas City Metro. But we realized that, you know, going out to the orchard was only about 40 minute drives for us to go out to Lawrence. And so we went out there. And we're able to pick up our chestnuts that first season.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: Yeah, of course…what is that relationship like, for you?
Hyejung Kook: Well, I mean, it's sort of the, it's what I've said about it's kind of that feeling of marking time. And I always feel like when we when we get there, like, Okay, everyone is busy. I know they're busy with harvest, and we got to we have the kids, and we got to do all this thing. But then, when we're there, we always slow down, slow down over there. And I never feel like they're trying to rush me out to like, do their things either. They want to, they want to share about, you know, how the harvest has been how things are, and we just get to, we get to talk in here a little bit about each other's lives in that little intersection of time.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: So like what's a dish you remember making or a dish you always love to make with chestnuts?
Hyejung Kook: Well, I mean for us it's always been just eating eating fresh roasted chestnuts… it's amazing though, because it really is an intergenerational kind of thing and food memories especially. So I have this memory of my great grandparents with the fresh chestnuts from their farm. And then making songpyeon with my grandparents, making this traditional food this one time. And then just the chestnuts we'd find wherever we could here in the US, I actually grew up in Pennsylvania. So, but you can find, it would often be Italian. It could be Italian chestnuts or might be different kinds of chestnuts, though we usually try to find some and have some at least a couple times a year in the fall.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: How do you think chestnuts connect people?
Hyejung Kook: Well, I mean, here in America, there's always like the chestnuts roasting on an open fire. That line is kind of an iconic line. But that it's so I feel like it's there… chestnuts roasting on the open fire has a different feeling for me personally, as well. Though, again, since we steamed in boiled in Pennsylvania, it wasn't the roasting, but it was still it was still the eating, it was the eating and the care. And my mom, you know, because I want again, when you're too little UK, it's hard to get it out. So she would be the one to go through the effort of doing the steaming and appealing and preparing the preparing the meat to be able to eat it easily. So there's a lot of, there's a lot of love and care, I think, in preparing chestnuts for your loved ones.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: Yeah, of course…what is that relationship like, for you?
Hyejung Kook: Well, I mean, it's sort of the, it's what I've said about it's kind of that feeling of marking time. And I always feel like when we when we get there, like, Okay, everyone is busy. I know they're busy with harvest, and we got to we have the kids, and we got to do all this thing. But then, when we're there, we always slow down, slow down over there. And I never feel like they're trying to rush me out to like, do their things either. They want to, they want to share about, you know, how the harvest has been how things are, and we just get to, we get to talk in here a little bit about each other's lives in that little intersection of time.
Hyejung Kook: Thank you so much for the chance to sort of talk about my relationship with chestnuts and the traditions that are you know, both in my past and in my future that are definitely connected to finding out about chestnut Charlie's and having them near near where I am now.
Nina Furstenau: Wow, that sounds so nice. Time did feel a bit slower when we were there.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: Oh definitely. And Debbie from Chestnut Charlie’s was nice enough to invite the team to cook chestnut soup with her in her kitchen.
[onions sizzling in pan] “just a little until we get softness”
Nina Furstenau: “Do you know what they use chestnuts for?”
Deb Milks: “You know, a lot of people just tell me, they just boil them and eat them, or roast them and eat them….this is one thing that I have found interesting in our travels, that chestnuts are often not on restaurant menus. They're eaten much in the home, you know, with the families, but you don't walk into a restaurant in Tokyo and find some dish but you know that, you know, in all over the country, you'll find lots of chestnut roasters, and you'd see the same thing in Korea, but you don't see them in a recipe for food at home.”
Nina Furstenau: “How would you say you were going to describe how chestnuts? How did chestnuts create community?”
Deb Milks: “How did chestnuts? Oh boy? Well, we talked a little earlier about the cultures across the world who still have chestnuts in their culture. When we were at Whole Foods, one time in Kansas City, this older woman walked up and we just gave her a roasted chestnut, we were also roasting. And as she was standing there, just tears came to her eyes. And she gave Charlie this huge hug. And she said, I'm from Iran. And that's what we did as a child. And thank you for doing this. I mean, it was just so emotional… so we have a harvest party at the end of our season, and our helpers all come with their families or friends, we invite everybody and everybody gets chestnuts to experiment with our workers. We give some try different recipes, and we're roasting around the fire. And our our workforce our helpers are it's just such a diverse bunch of people, but you're realizing once again, here's this really interesting community, you know, of people that are either just discovering it or or love chestnuts and and that crosses all cultures… the final thing, the year that we are crop failed, and we were able to go to Italy, and we were at, we had been given some context, people who were chestnut growers there. And Guido bossy was his name. We were at his home, we had a wonderful meal. And then the roasted chestnuts came out. And Guido said in Italy, the roasted chestnuts are the last thing that comes out. And then the whole evening is, oh, I'm absolutely full. But oh, I'll take another chestnut. No, I just need another glass of wine. And then the conversation just goes on and on and on. And it just so just sort of gathering around that. It's, it's what they do.”
Nina Furstenau: “Sound like that’s what you also do.”
Deb Milks: “We liked that part. So, okay, let's turn that down. And let it simmer.”
Nina Furstenau “Look at that. Look at that bubbling wonderful deliciousness. Smells. It does. Can you smell it?”
Deb Milks: “So we'll get some spoons out so you guys can try chestnut soup. Now the variations on this soup, Martha Stewart has one that's shitake a machine mushrooms and chestnuts which is an amazing soup also.”
Nina Furstenau: “That is really good. So smooth. And it is slightly sweet. Yeah, very creamy.”
Deb Milks: “Did you see me throw any sugar in there?”
Nina Furstenau: “No. That is delicious. I would I would take a bowl of that anytime.”
Lauren Hines-Acosta: That soup sounded really good. What did it taste like?
Nina Furstenau: *describes the taste and smell*
Lauren Hines-Acosta: So it seems chestnuts have taken us on a journey. We went to Lawrence, Kansas and we explored Korean cuisine. But going back to what Debbie said about food traditions, there’s another place that chestnuts are big: Italy.
Nina Furstenau: Yes, especially in the mountainous areas of Italy[10] where chestnut trees grow best. That’s why we’re heading there next.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: Ooo, so what we talking? Sorrento, Venice, where?
Nina Furstenau: More like St. Louis.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: Oh?
Nina Furstenau: Yes, particularly The Hill, which is a neighborhood in St. Louis. It was founded by Italian immigrants in the early 1800s.[11]
I went with Canned Peaches producer Alex Cox to a restaurant in The Ritz-Carlton.[12] It’s called Casa Don Alfonso.[13] We cooked an authentic Italian chestnut dish with Nicola Pignatelli. He’s the executive chef for all of Don Alfonso 1890 restaurants. The sister restaurant in Sorrento, Italy is being renovated. So, he’s been touring the other restaurants in Canada and China. Luckily, we happened to catch him while he was in town.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: What did you end up cooking?
[stirring sounds]
Nina Furstenau: We made duck breast with chestnut puree, caramelized chestnuts, saffron potato puree, spinach, red fruit sauce and duck stock.
[sounds of stirring the sauces] “wow smell that, fantastic”
Nina Furstenau: “It looks like it's just seared and a light golden brown. Smoking a lovely sizzle.”
Nicola Pignatelli: “Yeah the duck need the chestnut and needed the red the fruit sauce. All you do a little bit is wait. The combination with the dish is so important. The chestnut is a good ingredient. It’s stronger. You need a good ingredient for a combination.”
Nicola Pignatelli: “You imagine in the winter normally you'll find that the chestnut from October until a maximum in December. You imagine in winter the duck, the red fruit, the spinach the stalk you mentioned the chestnut - you'll need the different meter over the summer….I imagine this dish for the winter for the tasting.”
Nina Furstenau: “When you have chestnuts in the US which are used to be very common but haven't been for a long time who as an Italian when you see chestnuts here what does it mean?”
Nicola Pignatelli: I think it's good. I would I mean it is important that in other country know
this ingredient. This ingredient this particular is good. I think is like a nut but I think nobody knows these ingredients. I want share these ingredients in another country outside Italy.”
Nina Furstenau: Is this recipe with duck and chestnuts is this something that you would see traditionally?
Nicola Pignatelli: I remember my grandmother went to prepare this recipe duck with the chestnut. Before my grandmother don't remove the bones over the duck. But it’s a stuffing with the chestnut with the potato. Put inside the close. Yes, it cook afford a two hour. Now is like fine dining and all clean with the breast… I use the same ingredients but I changed the technique.
Alex Cox: So grandma's fine dining?
Nicola Pignatelli: Yes. Yeah, these are-
Nina Furstenau: When you are cooking this, you're thinking of her?
Nicola Pignatelli: Always. Always. Always. Yes. Always Always. I think yeah- My first teacher in the kitchen is my grandmother. Yes, my first chef… but in Italy, older grandmother cook a very very very nice older grandmother…
Nina Furstenau: When did you start cooking?
Nicola Pignatelli: Now I have a 57- almost 20 years ago.”
Nina Furstenau: Did you study In Italy or else within Italy?
Nicola Pignatelli: So in Italy, I work for Don Alfonso. Outside Italy, I work in Australia. For the Tetsuya Wakuda, the Japanese chef. I studied in Italy in Alma, School for the Chef. Not bad. Not bad.
Nina Furstenau: Okay, I think he’s downplaying.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: Oh, wow, that sounded so fun. What was being in the kitchen like?
Nina Furstenau: *describes the smells of the kitchen* And once he finished plating the dishes, Alex and I got to sit and eat. *describes what the restaurant looked like* Here’s a bit from our conversation.
[sounds of the kitchen]
[sounds of forks and knives]
[a waiter comes by and they rave over the food]
Nina Furstenau: “Okay, I'm trying the chestnut puree. It is absolutely delightful. Slightly sweet. You almost can taste the nuttiness but it's very smooth and delicious with the combination of flavors he's got on the plate.”
Nina Furstenau: So what I wonder is the chef has taken a great effort in combining these flavors from images he remembers from his home country and Italy and the countryside but also his grandmother in his grandmother's kitchen. So he combined chestnuts caramelized chests of sauce on chestnuts, also pureed chestnuts, pureed potatoes, raspberries, spinach, and this lovely wild duck. How do the chestnuts on this play into the story that we just heard chef tell us?”
Alex Cox: “I really think that the chestnut is like the linchpin of this entire thing. Because like the duck on its own flavorful, delicious, amazing but like once you start to mix things together…the like beautiful taste of a chestnut really brings all of the flavors together…”
Nina Furstenau: “I can see that not only beautiful but just the flavors play off each other really well.”
Alex Cox: “Yes, definitely.”
Nina Furstenau: “What I love seeing is when I understand why a chef has created a certain combination of flavors that's what's fascinating to me because he put it together for us just now in the story he put together his grandmother the fact that ducks in his area of Italy like eating raspberries and chestnuts and then he put all that together that memory of all of those things came together in this plate and that is what makes it delicious but also makes it mean something when I taste it I'm not just eating food I'm eat it's that's whole story that's behind it.”
Lauren Hines-Acosta: Wow I’m so jealous. That sounded so amazing.
Nina Furstenau: It was X. I can see why people love chestnuts.
Lauren Hines-Acosta: Well, the industry has been growing. The USDA said the number of chestnut farms in the Midwest and eastern US increased by over 50 percent between 2012 and 2017.[14] And chestnut farmers at the Northern Nut Growers Association are worried about meeting demand.[15]
Nina Furstenau: Well, what’s being done to meet that demand?
Lauren Hines-Acosta: I mean more farms are popping up. And there are efforts to restore the American chestnut tree. It can be done through breeding the tree with other varieties that can withstand the blight like the Chinese chestnut tree. Organizations in New York and California[16] are trying to plant genetically engineered American chestnut trees. But some environmental organizations and a group of Native American tribes called the
Haudenosaunee (Hoh-de-no-show-nee)[17] Confederacy are nervous about introducing these trees to the wild.[18] They’re worried the tree could reshape the shared environment that has adapted to life without it. They’re basically saying just because we can doesn’t mean we should. But scientists think there would be a greater cost to not have the trees.[19]
Nina Furstenau: So could we see chestnuts coming back into the traditional American diet?
Lauren Hines-Acosta: I think that’s a question better suited for food historian Ken Albala. He’s a history professor at the University of the Pacific in California. I talked with him back in July.
Ken Albala: “There are some very brave souls and scientists who are reback engineering, the American Chestnut, I think it'd be very interesting if in the next 20 years or however long it takes them. It becomes a very serious commercial venture. Because from every report, I have heard, the American Chestnut is smaller, but much tastier with the European variety. And people say remember it, you know, the people who who are still alive when these regrowing they're very few people left, you know, who were still alive from who ate American chestnuts. And I think gastronomically, there's, there's great promise here. And if they become more common and ubiquitous, and they're not limited to a tiny little season, I think just this could be a, you know, a new food resource and think about the, the potential of having something you don't have to plow into the, you know, it grows year after year, you don't have to do anything cultivation wise, and it's fairly carbon neutral, you're not running tractors, you're like, you know, adding inputs, like fertilizers… But I think tree foods, many of them have been seriously revived. I mean, you know, people eat walnuts and pine nuts and cashews, cashew butter, and, you know, their meat substitutes because they're high in fat, and they're good food source and renewable and sustainable and all sorts of things. chestnuts are not on that radar, because they don't behave like most nuts. They're not they're not, you know, hard and crunchy and snacky you know… But I think chestnuts are waiting for a comeback.”
Lauren Hines-Acosta: “Why do you think chestnuts are important?”
Ken Albala: “Chestnuts are important because they taste good. I mean that's first and foremost. And they link to a really interesting history. And they are almost forgotten. You know? I mean, if you were to look at that and ask how many people have eaten chestnuts lately, you know, it's not a common food. And I think it could be, you know, I think it'd be lovely if it were again.”
Nina Furstenau: I agree. It would be lovely.
And even though chestnuts have faded from America’s collective memory, people are rediscovering how this staple can bring people together. And others have always known how chestnuts can evoke memories. Even from thousands of miles away.
OUTRO
Canned Peaches is produced by Lauren Hines-Acosta, Janet Saidi, and me, Nina Mukerjee Furstenau, with production help from Yasha Mikolojczak and Alex Cox.
The series is written by Lauren Hines-Acosta and Janet Saidi.
Our editor is Aaron Hay.
Thanks to Lauren Hines-Acosta for co-hosting this episode with me.
Canned Peaches is a project of the Missouri News Network at the Missouri School of Journalism, Vox Magazine, Harvest Public Media. And KBIA.
Our engagement and outreach team is led by Jessica Vaughn Martin, Kassidy Arena, and Professor Kara Edgerson.
Special thanks to Harvest Public Media’s Maria Altman, Vox Magazine’s Heather Isherwood, and the Missouri School of Journalism’s Lee Hills Chair in Free-Press Studies Professor Kathy Kiely.
Canned Peaches is produced with support from Missouri Humanities and the Missouri Humanities Trust Fund.
On Canned Peaches we’re exploring how we’re all connected through the food on our plates.
For more episodes, go to KBIA.org.
And you can see more stories from Canned Peaches at VoxMagazine.com.
I’m Nina Mukerjee Furstenau. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
~~FOOTNOTES~~
[1] https://www.britannica.com/plant/chestnut blight was discovered in 1904 (~119 yrs ago)
[2] Chestnut Charlie’s, MO Chestnut Growers Assoc, Forest Keeling, Red Fern Farm say the demand is increasing
[3] https://www.npr.org/2017/12/25/572408088/the-story-behind-the-christmas-song
[4] https://www.britannica.com/plant/chestnut says trees were decimated by 1925, 21 years before the song
[5] https://www.britannica.com/plant/chestnut
[6] https://www.britannica.com/place/Appalachian-Mountains
[7] https://www.britannica.com/plant/chestnut
[8] https://www.chestnutcharlie.com/pages/directions
[9] https://chestnuthilloutdoors.com/learning-center/chestnuts-worldwide/#:~:text=Chestnut%20is%20thought%20to%20have,'kashta'%20which%20means%20tree,'kashta'%20which%20means%20tree
[10] https://www.italymagazine.com/featured-story/food-guide-chestnuts
[12] https://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/hotels/stlrz-the-ritz-carlton-st-louis/overview/?scid=f2ae0541-1279-4f24-b197-a979c79310b0
[13] https://www.casadonalfonsostlouis.com/
[14] https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/ncit0619.pdf
[15] Debbie told Lauren that it was a topic of conversation at the conference
[16] New York: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/science/genetically-modified-trees-living-carbon.html#:~:text=Major%20organizations%20that%20certify%20sustainable,have%20been%20planted%20is%20China, SUNY
[18] https://research.ncsu.edu/ges/files/2019/11/Rooted-in-Recognition-Indigenous-Environmental-Justice-GE-Chestnut-Tree_BarnhillDilling_2019.pdf
[19] Ron Revord interview
