Acorn Cake and Acorns Around the World
Jan 3rd, 2010 | By Hank | Category: Foraging | Comments | 20 Comments |
One of the first questions I had as I began researching acorns was what do other groups do with them? The literature is dominated by roughly hewn recipes from either various Indian groups or hippies. Neither, quite frankly, are recipes I am overly jazzed about.
That said, American Indians do know their stuff when it come to methods on dealing with raw acorns: How to turn what is essentially a bitter nut into all sorts of tasty foods. Meal, flour, whole nuts, grits, etc. They even boiled off acorn oil in certain varieties, which is reputedly similar in flavor and composition to olive oil. Who knew?
But oaks live all over the world, from Asia to North Africa to Europe to North America. And where there are acorns, people have eaten them. They have their own methods, too.
Let me digress for a second. For those of you who read my Twitter feeds, you will already know that last week was not my best: I ruptured my achilles tendon (carrying a Christmas tree, of all things!), walked around on it for a week (even went duck hunting once, stupid me) and finally had surgery to repair it Wednesday afternoon.
I am now in a cast and will remain so for months. Achilles surgery is no joke. My duck hunting season is over. So is the best part of the mushroom season, not to mention sturgeon, Dungeness crabs and the early gardening season. Best guess on when I will be mobile will be about April 1. Physical therapy will extend even beyond that. Ugh.
So the upshot will be a lot more cooking in house, fewer outdoor adventures — and a chance to buckle down on writing my book. I am not supposed to leave the house until my stitches are removed in a few weeks. Maybe I can write a new book: How To Cook Sitting Down. Sigh.
Back to acorns.
Turns out the acorn-eatingest people in the world right now are the Koreans. If you go to a good Asian market, there is a good chance you will find acorn flour and acorn noodles, which look just like soba noodles. I was about to go buy some and play with it when I got injured. From what I can tell the noodles are eaten in the same way soba noodles are; and yes, they also appear to a lesser extent in Japanese cuisine.
Any Korean food experts out there? My question is whether acorn flour and noodles are considered low-class or poor people’s food. Because that is their stigma everywhere else in the world, best I can tell.
This is interesting. A certain set of scholars think that sometime around 10,000 years ago, humans — who ate acorns with aplomb at the time — grew in population to the point where they were overeating them and threatening the oaks. Great big oaks that gave sweet acorns would be in demand and might even be fought over, as the Indians did in parts of California.
So with too few acorns and a burgeoning population, the scholars theorize that the people looked to wild grains as a secondary source of vital carbohydrates. And carbs are key to a hunter-gathering society; remember the Forager’s Dilemma I referred to last week? Turned out these wild grains — emmer wheat, spelt, barley and rye — domesticate easily, are annuals so can be planted anywhere if your tribal group moves around, and give easily collectible seed that is lighter than a big ole’ bag of acorns, which have a pretty long lag time from acorn to acorn-bearing oak. And good luck moving a giant oak when invaders arrive, but you can flee with some barley seed and plant again next spring.
Acorns, which are, for the most part, bitter and need to be water-leached at least once or twice to be palatable, fell by the wayside. Acorns also lack gluten, which is vital in making bread items stick together. Wheat, barley and rye all have at least a little gluten. Not so with acorn.
So acorns, and in Europe chestnuts, which have a similar consistency, fell to the status of emergency or famine foods. A fixation with whitened wheat flour furthered this. Black bread was for peasants, and acorn cooks up dark. It’s the sugars in them.
Consequently, you need to seach far and wide for acorn recipes in European circles. North African Berbers do use them, however. I corresponded with Paula Wolfert, who wrote the great Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, which is the sine qua non of Moroccan cookbooks. Wolfert told me that Berbers will sometimes make couscous from acorn flour. Fascinating. I have heard that Italians will make acorn flour pasta, too. I developed my own recipe for acorn flour pasta here.
Another source on Moroccan food tells me they also roast and salt acorns and serve them like roasted chestnuts. Linda Berzok, who wrote American Indian Food, says that the Indians around Tuscon, Arizona, sell roasted acorns from the Emory Oak, which are so sweet they don’t need leaching. An expert on Mexican food says in Chihuahua they do the same thing; makes sense, as the Emory Oak lives there, too.
Back in Europe, acorns from the Cork oak are pretty sweet, and those that the famed jamon iberico pigs eat, the bellotas, reputedly need no leaching. I mentioned the German acorn coffee last week, and apparently both the Germans and Swiss resorted to them during World War II.
Janet from The Old Foodie sent me a recipe for acorn bread from an English book written in 1802 that is a little like the acorn flatbreads I made last week, although with no wheat flour. These English acorn cakes are more like acorn meal hamburger patties cooked in embers.
In Europe, the thread running through most acorn and chestnut cookery is that they are fillers when wheat flour is scarce. Considering the reverence many groups have for wheat it’s pretty easy to see why anything they need to fill out a bread recipe would be seen as an adulteration, not an enhancement.
I am not a European. I am an American, and really couldn’t care less about reverence for wheat or whatever. I wanted to mess around with acorns because I knew they were edible, I knew lots of cultures have worked with them, they are free, and, well, I wanted to impress Chef Chris Cosentino.
OK, I know. It’s juvenile. Chris is a great chef in San Francisco and I am an amateur living in a suburb of Sacramento. But we sorta know each other and we both view food — especially meat and offal — as a chance to perform a series of mad experiments in the hopes of making what most people throw out unforgettably delicious.
The acorn thing started a few years ago when he served me an acorn soup. It was delicious and smooth, like a chestnut soup but better. His had a little seared duck liver on top that I thought wasn’t overly needed. But the soup itself was superb. I determined to make it.
I still haven’t, damn this achilles injury. But I know now what I want to do with it. More on that later. I have, however, gotten a solid understanding of what acorns can do.
After the bread and coffee, I made an acorn cake. The Italians make a chestnut flour cake called castagnaccio, but it contains no leaveners. I imagine it’s like a hockey puck. So I Frenchified it and added beaten egg whites, baking powder and baking soda. I baked it in little ramekins and topped it with powdered sugar.
Now I am not a cake maker. The cake itself was really crumbly — too crumbly for my taste. But the taste of the cake was amazing! It was a dead ringer for a gingerbread cake, only there was no gingerbread spices in it at all! I was shocked. All that’s in it is acorn flour, eggs, honey, olive oil, sugar and a pinch of salt. How did it get to be like gingerbread? Must be the acorns.
For those of you who make cakes, can you check my recipe and let me know if you have any suggestions on making it hold together better?
The last acorn experiment I got to before the injury was really not so much an acorn recipe as a recipe with acorns. It is a grouse soup. Yes, a soup. With ruffed grouse. I normally would not do that to a game bird as rare as a ruffie, but we had two that needed to be skinned — so they could not be roasted properly. I also had some real wild rice, not the cultivated kind, that I wanted to use as well.
Basically the acorns serve the same basic purpose as a potato in this soup: A firm starchy thing to chew on. Had I had this soup to do over again, I would use leached acorns that had not been roasted; the roasted acorns were too tough and needed a long, long time to soften.
The soup itself is a good, hearty soup that tastes like how someone living in the Minnesota Northwoods would make chicken soup. Wild rice, grouse meat, grouse broth, porcini mushrooms, carrots, acorn pieces. I tossed in some grated pecorino cheese for the hell of it, too. Was a nice touch.
I’m still not done with acorns. I’d like to share what I’ve learned about collecting and processing them, still need to work with that acorn flour pasta — and I still need to make Chris Cosentino proud with my own version of acorn soup. That comes up next.
Hey Hank
Bad news about the tendon – Vitamin E is reputed to aid re-growth.
Good News about the book – now you have no excuses and with Holly back at work no distractions either.
I feel hungry just thinking about reading it. Please reserve two copies of the first print run for me.
SBW
I am intrigued by the acorns. I’ll have to figure what kind of oaks we have here in Northern Germany.
Get well, Hank!
Excellent article Hank!
Had me all the way to the end, and I especially am fond of Gingerbread!!
Both my Maternal and Paternal Grandmothers made a very tasty flat bread from acorns (which did not cause diarrhea like the joke upon white people which some natives would play
)
I will have to ask my Aunts if they remember the recipe.
Best of luck for a speedy recovery! My neighbor has two huge oaks that produce many acorns. It would be fun to be able to use their bounty.
Hello. I have been reading your blog for a while, but this is the first time I have commented. I enjoyed the acorn entries very much. I have never cooked with them, but I have with chestnuts. My Nonni asked me to find her chestnut flour a few years ago to make Castagnaccio o Migliaccio. She told me a story about her mother taking a perilous train trip to buy chestnut flour during WW II, as wheat flour was scarce, and the chestnut flour is very nutritious. Also Giuliano Bugialli has a small section “Chestnuts and Chestnut Flour Desserts” in “The Fine Art of Italian Cooking” that could perhaps inspire other recipes. Good luck!
I love the info on acorns and can’t wait for more! I’m in Korea and I usually see acorns used in something called dotori mook (?). It is like a brown jello, usually made into a square shape. They make the same thing using buckwheat which is a lot better.
The key is the sauce that is poured over it, or dipped into. The main ingredients are soy sauce, sesame oil, red pepper flakes, sesame seed, minced green onion and a sweetener.
I don’t think it is considered lower class food because it is sometimes served as a side dish at both cheap and expensive restaurants Koreans have great food attitudes and seem to eat anything. Maybe that is why I like it here.
I have seen the acorn powder they use to make the mook translated as acorn starch. I’m not sure if there is a difference like corn flour and corn starch though. I’ll only be here another week, but I will ask around on it.
Bummer about the leg Hank! Least you got a last duck hunt in.
As for acorns, I just pulled my copy of the excellent (and James Beard Award-winning) “Foods of the Southwest Indian Nations” by Lois Ellen Frank. It’s a great source for wild ingredients from the desert Southwest, and has two recipes using Emory Oak acorns from the Apache lands in Southeast Arizona. One is an Acorn Chile Ravioli in a clear azafran broth and the other is an Acorn and Pine Nut soup with Wildflowers. Both look good, but I’m fresh out of Acorns around here. She does talk about how the Emory acorns don’t require the usual soaking and debittering.
SBW: Will do! And I will try to get the publisher to send me to the UK for a book tour, too!
Michael: Definitely get me those recipes. I want to see how they are different from all the others I’ve read. More information is better, IMHO.
Diana: Find out what kind of oaks they are. That will determine how much leaching they will need. Hope they are not Live Oaks, which need a TON of leaching…
A. Tokos: I like Bugialli’s work. I will have to look up that book.
Mark: Good information about the Koreans. I think — but am not sure — that acorn starch is in fact different from acorn flour…
Russell: Will have to look up those recipes. The one with wildflowers looks especially interesting.
Hank,
It looks like both you and FOTL are both switching directions a bit that that is awesome. I can’t wait to see what comes out.
Sorry about the injury. That must be hard and I feel or you.
Good luck with the Acorns, I think I might try some of these.
r.
R: I am not so much switching directions as I am catching up with foraging projects I’ve been planning. Don’t worry — there is still plenty of wild game to be cooked here…
Hank, way to go with the acorns. They were the most important staple to Native Americans in most of California. I am an archaeologist and we have found large sites that were located near oak groves, bedrock for grinding and a water source specifically for the exploitation of acorns throughout California.
There have also been several hundred human teeth found from the late archaeological period (last 1,000 years or so) that show distinctive wear of the bicuspids that many feel is indicative of a diet based on acorns. Though the wear may be from bits of gravel that got into the acorns during processing, not necessarily the acorns themselves.
There are also large pestles that have been found which are apparently prized items as they have been found in burial contexts and as grave goods. And indications on skeletal remains that show that the tendons that attached the muscles to the bones in the shoulder of some Native American women were highly developed, suggesting they spent a lot of time grinding and pounding acorns.
The acorn is very important to Native Californian culture, so the fact that you are using them is very cool. Do not miss the acorn celebration in September/October at Sutter’s Fort.
Hey Hank -
As a vegan-turned-hunter, I enjoy your approach to “honest food”. Great stuff!
Hope the tendon heals quickly and well.
Tovar
http://www.tovarcerulli.com/
As a chef in a Native American restaurant I cooked acorn soup and bread (cake). We used both locally harvested acorns and acorn starch and flour bought in local Korean stores.
Tovar: Thanks for the kind words – I will bookmark your blog and read it.
Jim: Excellent! Glad to find someone who cooks with acorns often. Is your acorn soup smooth? What is the functional difference between acorn starch and flour? Same as corn starch and cornmeal?
As for your cake, how does it differ from the one I made? Do you find you have issues with it being too crumbly?
You have definatly changed the way I go hunting. I not only look for the specific game I’m hunting, but searching for anything and everything to cook and eat. It has made every hunting excursion alot more enjoyable. Can’t wait for the book! I’m having some good duck duck days of late, so let me know if you need any.
Feel better! And I’ve also heard tales of acorn coffee. Blech. I’d try it, though!
Just came home from my local Korean market and they had packets of acorn starch for sale- no idea what its used for though, and the gentleman at the register couldn’t be of much help.
I’d love to know what it could be used for- its consistency was extremely fine, and it looked more like a beige flour or cornstarch than finely ground nuts.
Hope your recovery is swift! I was housebound for 4 days and almost went KooKoo for Coco Puffs.
So sorry to hear about your tendon and the surgery. Best wishes for a recovery as smooth and prompt as can be!
I don’t know if I’ll ever grind my own acorn flour, but boy, you do always write interesting stuff! The cake looks great – and what an intriguing description of flavors….
Great post. Thanks for sharing it with us. I’m searching for recipe of Tajine of lamb to artichokes. Has anybody heard of it?