St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Chestnuts
Oct. 26 2005
NEW FRANKLIN, MO. - If you call University of Missouri professor Michael Gold a nut, he'll take it as a compliment.
Gold is obsessed - in a productive way - with chestnuts, which he sees as a potential multimillion-dollar crop for Midwestern farms and orchards.
He and his colleagues will be spreading the word on Saturday, when the university's Horticulture and Agroforestry Research Center holds its third annual chestnut roast. Attendance last year reached about 3,000, with more expected for this year's event. They expect to roast about 300 pounds of this year's record 4,000-pound chestnut crop, which is about double last year's yield.
The center calls this weekend's roast its "premier outreach event." But the event will offer more than freshly roasted chestnuts.
"I think the American palate is always looking for more diversity," Gold says. Toward that end, he's enlisted Craig Cyr, chef at the Wine Cellar and Bistro in Columbia, to develop recipes. Cyr offers chestnut dishes at his restaurant and will demonstrate some of his recipes at the festival, including ravioli of Missouri apple and roasted chestnuts and roasted lamb with a garlic, rosemary and chestnut sauce.
Gold also touts the nutritional characteristics of the chestnut.
"It's not a whole lot like walnuts, almonds, pistachios or other common nuts," Gold says, mentioning that the Center for Agroforestry has dubbed the chestnut the "un-nut."
"They're very low in fat, and also very low in calories, especially when compared with other nuts," Gold says. "It's more like a grain that grows on a tree."
As associate director of the center, Gold is leading a long-term project evaluating the affinity of various chestnut types (called cultivars) to Midwestern soil, topological and environmental conditions. He traces the center's chestnut fixation to Ken Hunt, a post-doctoral fellow whom Gold calls "a lover of interesting tree nuts and fruits."
"He just started grafting up cultivars," joining parts of different trees to achieve a new type of tree, Gold says.
Because the American chestnut was all but wiped out by blight between 1904 and 1950, Hunt focused on blight-resistant Chinese varieties of chestnut.
Chestnuts grow in groups of three in spiny pods. The trees take from six to nine years to produce a full crop, and the university has more than 50 cultivars in various stages of maturity.
In 2004, the Center for Agroforestry conducted nationwide research on chestnut producers.
"We estimated that nationwide production was between 1 1/2 and 2 million pounds," Gold says. "The majority of growers are either hobbyists or extremely small scale - in the range of 500 to 1,500 pounds."
The research also showed that U.S. imports were about 5 million pounds, indicating that additional domestic product would find a local market.
Among cooks, chestnuts are most often used in ethnic cuisines, including those from Italy and several Asian countries. One Italian colleague showed Gold how the chestnut was adaptable to appetizers, soups, breads, side dishes, entrees and desserts.
In the United States, the nut is most widely sold in ethnic and specialty markets; when it is sold in supermarkets, it's available for only a few months.
The harvest for Chinese chestnuts lasts about a week, and their high moisture content causes them to mold if left at room temperature for more than a couple of days. Nonetheless, Gold believes that Midwestern-grown chestnuts can achieve close to year-round availability.
"If you store them in a zip-lock bag in the refrigerator where the carrots go, they can store for many months," Gold says. He also advocates a marketing approach currently popular in Australia, where shelled chestnuts are sold frozen, "like broccoli."
What's more, the Chinese cultivars being developed in mid-Missouri are easier to cook with than some of their European cousins. The thin inner skin, called a fellicle, separates fully during cooking, leaving the yellow meat inside easily accessible.
In addition to whole nuts and their meats, Gold points to a market for chestnut honey, made by bees that pollinate chestnut blossoms in the spring, and for chestnut flour, which is a baking alternative for people on a gluten-free diet.
Gold estimates that a commercially viable chestnut orchard can be established for about $5,000. A mature one-acre orchard can produce about 1,500 pounds of chestnuts a year.
The Center for Agroforestry's facility is a patchwork of open fields and pastures and wild and tightly organized forests. The concept of "agroforestry," Gold explains, is combining trees and crops on the same acreage, and the center is conducting numerous research projects to understand the best possible interactions.
Gold adds that the geographical and environmental factors that make the hills along the Missouri River good for wine grapes and peaches also make the topology good for chestnut-growing. "It's a new alternative for the family farm," he says.
--Joe Bonwich
jbonwich@post-dispatch.com
314-340-8133
