Slightly Sooty Salad: Step into acorn time

What is it about acorns? There’s something undeniably attractive about an acorn’s varied shades, its shape, its weight. It looks like someone’s slightly antique, tiny woodworking project. It seems valuable even though it’s not worth very much. And if we look closely, somehow there are thousands of natural objects and creatures with similarly spectacular features. Why do they appear so beautiful to us? I’m sure this beauty can be seen anywhere, but maybe these objects become even more valuable in a place like New York City.

A couple of years after moving to this patch of concrete-covered earth in my somewhat oblivious late 20s, I was watching a nature show on my phone on the train and felt a wave of emotion wash over me. I had underestimated my need for connection with natural things and felt this longing stirred up by the sights and sounds of a boat pushing through a calm sea and the birds and other creatures nearby. Being around oaks and working with acorns as food helps rebuild that connection. I remember times as a kid when I had nowhere to be but at a table outside with my grandmother, under an oak tree, in the small alley next to her house. She would be reading a book, most likely by Danielle Steel or Stephen King. The squirrels would be busy overhead and the acorns would fall unsteadily with and without the squirrels’ help. But there’s some kind of rhythm to acorns falling. It feels like it’s keeping time in a way that takes you out of time. Or it’s opening the door into some other kind of time.

And we can access that right here in Brooklyn. We collected our nuts from a huge white oak next to the Picnic House in Prospect Park as the acorns fell around us. With nice-sized, maybe ¾-inch-long white oak acorns, we needed maybe 25 to 30 acorns for our acorn chocolate cake. Here’s the short version of how to prepare the nuts, assuming you’re not taking the time to dry them first: Crack and remove the shell, discarding any parts that are moldy, crumbly or darkly discolored. The acorns you use should look relatively clean, but some oxidation and browning is normal, especially once they are opened. You can store your shelled acorns in a closed container in the refrigerator before use. The bitter tannins in the acorns are water-soluble, so you have the choice to use cold water or hot water to remove the tannins, though the end product will behave differently depending on which method you use. The chocolate acorn cake recipe we used below called specifically for hot-leached acorns.

To hot-leach acorns, put them in a pot of boiling water. Get a second pot of water boiling and swap the acorns into that pot after 5 to 15 minutes. There are studies that state that there’s a higher concentration of tannins in acorn skins, though I couldn’t detect them by tasting the skins on our acorns. In any case, most acorn-eaters recommend removing the skins. They can be easily removed once the acorns start to soften after boiling for a few minutes. The tannins in the acorns will turn the water a dark tannish-brown color. The color will lighten with successive water changes but won’t likely go away altogether. Acorns from different types of trees will vary in their tannin content, but you know they are ready to use when they don’t taste bitter anymore.

Our acorns needed four to five changes of water before they were ready for our chocolate acorn cake recipe. Start with 6 ounces of chocolate chips and melt them in a pan with ½ cup butter. Let it cool for a bit before adding to your blender along with about 1½ cups, or 180 grams, of hot-leached acorn pieces, ½ cup honey or your sweetener of choice, 5 eggs, ¼ cup cocoa powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. Blend the ingredients until they are smooth. We needed to add ¼ to ⅓ cup milk to help it blend more easily. Pour the batter into a greased pie plate and bake at 350 degrees for 25 to 30 minutes. It’s done when the top cracks a bit but the center still jiggles slightly.

Hope you are enjoying fall and finding ways to stay connected to the earth underneath the concrete under our feet. Please share any thoughts or your favorite recipes with slightlysooty@gmail.com.