On Tue, 8 Nov 2016 21:46:48 -0500, "Jean B." > wrote:
>Leonard Blaisdell wrote:
>>
>> Every region of the U.S. has certain foods that don't seem to make it
>> elsewhere in volume. I've never eaten alligator, morels, collards,
>> etc.. I simply don't live where they are generally available.
>> In Nevada, we have pine nuts from the single leaf pinyon that aren't
>> generally available nationwide. I have harvested them a few times, and
>> it's free but dirty work in Nevada foothills. You use long poles to
>> whack the tree and tarps to gather the nuts that fall. You come home
>> smelling like a Christmas tree and sticky enough to act as flypaper.
>> Luckily, they are harvested commercially, and a old man can buy them
>> for $12.99 per pound around here. So I bought some.
>> I cover them with heavily salted water in a skillet.
>> https://www.dropbox.com/s/adhpom7txf...start.JPG?dl=0
>> This is the finished product as soon as the salted water lightly boils
>> off. I mean as soon as it boils off. There's no pan roasting going on.
>> https://www.dropbox.com/s/gblji1l3fp...shJPG.JPG?dl=0
>> The pan, don't use black iron, now needs a soaped steel pad. There's
>> plenty of pitch along with the salt. The spoon needs the same
>> treatment.
>> https://www.dropbox.com/s/xxjr7ai1qe...utpan.JPG?dl=0
>> And the finished pine nuts.
>> https://www.dropbox.com/s/kdb7x0uqyq...oduct.JPG?dl=0
>> They are salty to look at in the photos, but that's nearly all on the
>> shell. You bite them a couple of times around the equator, and they
>> break in half. They're delicious.
>> I'm talking about U.S. pine nuts, not Italian pignoli. Ours are fresh,
>> milky if not cooked, bendable if cooked recently, freshly off-the-tree
>> and a different species, although they may taste the same. I've never
>> tried the Italian ones.
>> So what's your (any country, any region) specialty food that others
>> here or in your own country are unlikely to be familiar with?
>>
>> leo
>>
>
>Oh! I am sooo envious about those piņons! I only have them when my
>daughter or her dad bring some back from the (US) southwest. I can get
>Mediterranean pinenuts here, but they aren't nearly as good as the ones
>you are describing. (I avoid any pinenuts that aren't labeled and that
>could contain those nasty things that leave a long-lasting bitter taste
>in one's mouth.)
As a kid growing up in Brooklyn there were vending machines everywhere
where for a penny one could get a big handful of pinenuts, they were
in paper thin shells and we called them Indian nuts... pumpkin seeds
were called punkin seeds, sunflower seeds were called polly seeds