The trouble with chestnuts

New on the market is the Chestnutter (below),

a clever device invented by Sharon Siegel, a chestnut lover from Englewood, New Jersey.

Now, if you're not familiar with chestnuts, it's time you remedied that deficiency.

So before moving on to the invention, and then the trouble alluded to up top, let us consider the chestnut.

A wonderful thing, the chestnut.

Its tree once dominated

the forests of the Eastern U.S., growing over 100 feet tall

with a beautiful, spreading crown up to 100 feet wide.

It provided shade, fuel,

wonderful wood for building and furniture, and nutritious food to anyone.

In fact, you can live on chestnuts, with their ideal, easy-to-digest combination of carbohydrate and just a little protein and fat, in this respect unlike other nuts.

They're similar in nutritional value to brown rice, and sometimes called "the grain that grows on a tree."

But came the chestnut blight early in the 20th century, destroying the native tree and rendering it a historical curiosity.

A pity.

Attempts have been made, and in fact are ongoing, to bring back the lovely American Chestnut tree, but so far not much headway has been made.

And therein lies the problem - the "trouble."

I've stopped buying chestnuts because I cannot find them without the majority I buy being rife with rot from having been picked God knows how long ago, refrigerated and/or frozen, stored, and finally put into the bins at the grocery store.

I love the taste of roasted chestnuts, and have a

perforated chestnut roasting pan for the fireplace, and a

chestnut knife.

I even have a clever chestnut scoring device, about which more in a moment, but it's like being all dressed up with no place to go.

All my hardware sits dormant in my cupboards and drawers, awaiting good chestnuts.

With that background, let us move on to the problem of scoring chestnuts.

If you don't cut an X into the shell of the chestnut before roasting it, bad things happen: namely, there's nowhere for the heat and moisture generated inside the shell to go, and the thing kind of cooks in the shell.

Besides which, it's very difficult to peel as the shell kind of welds itself to the nut inside.

So the chestnut knife was invented to score the chestnut with an X.

But unfortunately, the curved chestnut and the curved, razor sharp blade of the knife often don't get on well, which can result in a trip to the emergency room for seriously deep lacerations not infrequently requiring stitches.

That'll ruin that cozy fireplace scene in a hurry.

So someone invented this little

Chestnut Critter, which I purchased last year,

You simply place the chestnut on a flat surface, press the device's concave side (not shown in the picture, unfortunately) down, and an X-shaped cutter extrudes and cuts a nice X into the chestnut's shell.

Quick, neat, simple, and the sharp edges are recessed when not in use.

Works great.

But as I said, until I find a decent source of chestnuts, it's staying in the drawer.

Now, back to the Chestnutter.

It looks like mutant garlic press, what with that middle arm.

You place your chestnut inside the little cup, then secure it with the middle arm, then press down with the top arm, and a stainless steel blade cuts a perfect X.

Costs $12.98 at Zabar's and $19.95 at Gracious Home in Manhattan and Cooktique in Tenafly, New Jersey.

Or buy it from the company that markets it, at chestnutter.com.

Costs $19.95 there, plus $5 shipping.

Considering that the Chestnut Critter costs $3.99 and won't injure you; that a chestnut knife costs $6.99 and can seriously hurt you; and that the Chestnutter costs as much as $25, and requires - it would appear to me - a lot more effort to use than either of the two less expensive solutions to the "X marks the spot" problem, as it were, since you have to insert each chestnut into the little cup, then remove it after scoring, which might get old after a dozen or so, I'd go with the Critter if you forced me to choose.

But you know how I am.

"The Trouble With Harry," a 1955 film by Alfred Hitchcock starring John Forsythe, Edmund Glenn, and Shirley MacLaine in a sensational debut, is superb.

That's where the title for this post came from, in case you were wondering.

[via Florence Fabricant and the New York Times]