"ingredient spotlight" news and stories

Chestnuts, their glossy shells a reddish-brown shade that launched a thousand hair dyes, look like the acorn's voluptuous, glammed-up cousin. The starchy nut of the Castanea sativa tree, they're often viewed as a Christmas-only food in America ("chestnuts roasting on an open fire" and all that). But back in the day, chestnuts were so prevalent they were considered a poor man's food, a staple of everyday early American cooking. The nut, which matures in fall, is still used in all kinds of dishes around the world, but has become much rarer and more expensive in America due to a blight that killed off most of the country's chestnut trees in the early 20th century.

In Italy, chestnuts are ground into flour to make breads and cakes, and fermented into beer. In New England., they're sometimes still used in stuffing (check out this recipe for chestnut and mushroom stuffing).
In France, marrons glacés, or candied chestnuts are a popular winter treat, often wrapped up in frilly layers of gold and silver paper to be given as presents. In China, they're eaten roasted and salted as snacks, or used in stir-fries (see The New York Times' The Minimalist's recipe for shrimp and chestnut stir-fry).

The Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus L.) is not from Jerusalem, nor is it an artichoke. The tuber also known as the sunchoke is the root of a type of sunflower native to North America, and was a staple food for early European immigrants. It may have gotten its name from these pilgrims, who considered America the "New Jerusalem," or it may be a bastardization of the Italian word girasole, meaning sunflower. Once considered a "poor man's food," the Jerusalem artichoke is experiencing a bit of a renaissance as of late.

The veggie resembles a finger of ginger root, with a nutty, starchy taste, somewhere between potato and artichoke. They can be found in the produce section of some supermarkets (I've seen them lots of times, I just never knew what they were!). The Jerusalem artichoke can be used like other root vegetables such sweet potatoes, carrots and parsnips, diced and tossed in stew, roasted with herbs, or pan-fried with butter. Check out this Epicurious recipe for Jerusalem artichoke with sage butter.

A pluot is a relatively new fruit, developed in the late 20th century by Floyd Zaiger, a hybrid between a plum and an apricot that is touted by growers as having all of the good properties of both fruits, and none of the drawbacks. They have a very high sugar content, are smooth-skinned and do not have the tartness that is often associated with plum skins. Their flesh is a little bit firmer than that of plums, similar in firmness to the flesh of a ripe nectarine, so they hold up better to being eaten out-of-hand or sliced up than plums do.

While the name gets thrown around a lot, especially with the ever-increasing discussion of shopping at local farmers markets and avoiding conventionally grown, mass produced produce, many consumers still wonder what heirloom tomatoes really are.

While some feel that a set, defined time limit of 50 or 100 years must be included in the definition of an heirloom plant, the short definition of an heirloom tomato is that it is an open-pollinated tomato plant, meaning that it is naturally pollinated by exposure to birds, insects and animals. Hybrid plants, the commercially grown tomatoes, do not always produce reliable, viable seeds due to the fact that some (if not most) of the crosses used to generate the plants were done artificially.

The more traditional tomatoes, those that are often seen in supermarkets and the majority of restaurants, have been bred to enhance certain characteristics besides flavor. For example, many have been selected for disease resistance or for having a slightly thicker skin, which makes them hold up better during shipping. Most of these conventional tomatoes are close to spherical and very red in color. Their flavor is ordinary, with little "wow" factor.

Chipotle chiles are not a unique chile, but are actually dried, smoked jalapeno chiles. They are dark brown and wrinkly, in sharp contrast to the glossy look of fresh chiles, but have a wonderfully rich flavor. Most of the heat of the jalapeno is retained when the chile is dried, so chipotles are fairly spicy, falling in the middle ranges of the heat scale. They have smoky overtones, but the real flavor of the chiles is complex and earthy. Instead of causing a sharp and immediate heat, the heat grows gradually as you eat it and takes time to fade away.

In truth, most kinds of chilies can be smoke-dried and sometimes they are all called "chipotle" no matter what they started out as, but the vast majority of the chipotle chiles on the market were originally jalapenos.