Friday, April 22, 2011

Acorn Flour Made

Well, I got the leached acorns dried and ground (in a coffee grinder - worked great although I'm a little concerned it might have dulled the blades a bit) into a fine meal/flour.

Cookies, sadly, will have to wait until tomorrow.

The flour taste great, although I wish I had leached the acorns for a little longer.  There's still a slight tannin aftertaste - like a great Shiraz.  Also like your tongue is a hide in the process of being tanned.
Again these are sawtooth oak (Q. acutissima) acorns that we're told are very bitter despite being the mast equivalent of crack cocaine for wild turkeys and deer.  Euell Gibbons, in Stalking the Wild Asparagus*, talks about boiling his acorns for 2 hours, and those were chestnut oaks (which he calls Quercus muehlenbergii, so either old Euell got his common name or his Latin name goofed up - probably common name since another name for chinkapin oak - the true Q muehlenbergii - is rock chestnut oak), a "sweet" acorn.

That's OK, come cookie baking time I'll compensate by adding a pinch of extra sugar.  One time, and for some reason I cannot possibly fathom, I was watching a cooking show with that old Cajun dude Justin Whathisname.  He was pouring cooking wine into a measuring cup over pot when he winked at the camera and said, "Whoops, missed dee cup."  That's how I am with sugar in cookies.

* Yes, I will return your book soon... I promise!

No comments:

Post a Comment