Smells Like Hell, Tastes Like . . . Chestnuts Sort Of

The ginkgo tree was always a mystery to me. One, it's a dopey tree. Yes, the leaves are beautiful and graceful — like a delicate fan! — but the trees themselves just kind of poke up out of the ground like a giraffe, or the erect trunk of a Snuffleupagus, and provide little, if any, shade. That spindly unshadeworthy piece of parsley in the middle of the picture below is a ginkgo:

Spindly-Ass Ginkgo Tree, Vernon Boulevard, Hunters Point, Long Island City, Queens

They're even lamer than London Plane trees in this respect, which is saying a lot. One, the London Plane has ugly bark — like a cement leper — and two, the London Plane's leaves just kind of shrivel up and get brown during fall foliage season — fall being basically the only reason to think about trees in the first place.

The female variety of the ginkgo tree is particularly maligned, owing to the distinct smell of its fruit. Indeed, there is not much love for female ginkgo trees in New York.

Which is to say, it came as a bit of a surprise yesterday morning when I saw an Asian woman collecting fallen ginkgo fruit along 49th Avenue. As soon as I saw her, I knew what she was doing, but I kind of forgot that people actually used the fruit for anything. She had a huge plastic bag full of the ginkgo fruit and my first thought was that she was doing a good deed — the less ginkgo fruit the better, as the smell is one of the worst things about this time of year.

Of course it got me curious.

I went back inside to Google "ginkgo fruit," then "ginkgo nut," then finally "ginkgo nut recipe." Within 15 minutes I was back outside with my own plastic bag to collect some.

This was the closest tree:

Ginkgo Nuts: Female Ginkgo Tree, 49th Avenue, Hunters Point, Long Island City, Queens, November 8, 2010

And this is what the sidewalk under that tree looked like:

Ginkgo Nuts: Ginkgo Fruit, 49th Avenue, Hunters Point, Long Island City, Queens, November 8, 2010

I moved carefully around the base of the tree so as not to get too much of the smashed rotting pulp on my shoes and fairly quickly collected a couple dozen of the unbruised, intact fruit.

As I walked back to the apartment I hoped for two things. One, that the landlord would not smell me coming in. Two, and more importantly, that whatever smell there would be would dissipate by the time Jen returned. That said, there's something exhilarating about taking something really stinky into your home, and I hope to revisit the feeling when I finally try making tripe, which I've been told smells like total ass.

Part of doing this involved me wanting to reprogram the smell in my own mind; if what I made was awesome, or even just palatable, then maybe I won't be grossed out every time I walk by a pile of rotting ginkgo fruit.

During this experiment I kept thinking of durian, the similarly icky fruit that is popular in Asia. There is a famous saying about durian that it "smells like hell, but tastes like heaven." Before we visited Thailand in 2005, we had read that hotels have signs banning guests from bringing durian into their rooms. We didn't see any of those signs when we were there (at least I don't remember any now), but we did get a chance to try durian. It definitely has a pungent smell. As for the taste — not quite "heaven," but I admit it's still pretty good — it's kind of like a pungent avocado. (If you have avocado in your mind when you eat durian then you won't be grossed out by the smell, color or mouthfeel — maybe just less grossed out, I guess, since smell, color and texture are all pretty important.) I've ordered durian stuff at least twice since first trying it in Thailand — once was a sweet dim sum dish in the San Francisco area and another time I had it in a drink form at the Queens Indonesian restaurant Minangasli.

Back to the ginkgo. Some people online suggest wearing latex gloves when working with ginkgo fruit, but after opening my bag and spreading out some of the (intact!) fruit on the counter, I decided it probably wasn't necessary — it seems that the (intact!) fruit does not actually smell all that bad. Yes, there is the faint smell of puke (and worse, as the commenters here describe the ginkgo smell), but after taking the ginkgo inside, I've come to the conclusion that the notorious ginkgo smell comes from rotting fruit and not fresh fruit:

Ginkgo Nuts: Ginkgo Fruit

So no smell — so far so good! — until I take a pile of them into the other room to get better lighting for one of these photographs:

Ginkgo Nuts: Ginkgo Fruit

As I balanced the cutting board and the camera, three of the ginkgo fruits fell on the floor and rolled under our kitchen island thingy. I should probably say "three or four" because while I'm pretty sure I recovered all the fruit that fell, I'm not completely sure. I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

The first thing I did after photographing the "pristine" fruit was rinse them with one of those vegetable washing soaps — I collected these from the sidewalk, after all, and even if I'm skeptical in general about stuff like "vegetable wash," it seemed like a good time to try it.

After washing and rinsing the fruit, I separated the fruit flesh (incidentally, the phrase "fleshy fruit" kind of skeeves me out) from the nut within. I started out cutting the fruit away with a knife, but the knife is unnecessary — the fruit is easily removed from the nut. The result looked like this:

Ginkgo Nuts: Ginkgo Fruit Removed

I then washed the nuts. Here is what the ginkgo nuts look like clean with all the fruit removed:

Ginkgo Nuts: Washed Ginkgo Nuts

Back in its plastic bag, the fruit flesh looked tempting; I debated doubling down and making a ginkgo fruit jelly, but I didn't want to press my luck that way. I instead took it out to the garbage can on the corner.

So with no discernible puke smell permeating the apartment, I scrubbed my hands and returned to the computer to consult some recipes. A feature on Gourmet Magazine's website was a start, but it seemed to come to the conclusion that the only thing you really want to do with ginkgo nuts is fry them, which was an unsatisfying option — even a baby diaper tastes good fried, and I wanted to actually taste the ginkgo nut.

There were a few threads on Chowhound about using ginkgo nuts. One suggested basically toasting them and that they were good with beer, with one commenter noting that they are "waxy, chestnutty, medicinal to me, but they're beautiful and are kind of addictive" — wow, they had me at "medicinal."

Another Chowhound thread provided a link to a Times article about one of the chefs at Masa who likes/liked to use them. The Gourmet piece mentioned it as well, but the writer had no success with the method. I decided to try toasting some and boiling some.

I toasted the nuts in their shells in the oven. After a few minutes, I tried one:

Ginkgo Nuts: Toasted Ginkgo Nuts

The taste was pretty good actually — a lot like a chestnut (and a lot easier to prepare than a chestnut, which if you don't buy shelled are a complete pain in the ass).

You'll see that some quick toasting gives the fruit a brownish color:

Ginkgo Nuts: Toasted Ginkgo Nuts

Next, I tried boiling the nuts. I was thinking about the boiled peanuts we had in South Carolina, and was aiming for that. Boiling them for a few minutes gives you a nut that looks like this:

Ginkgo Nuts: Boiled Ginkgo Nuts

The boiled nuts are only OK — gummy and fairly bland, which seemingly confirmed the Gourmet writer's experience with ginkgo nuts. I put the boiled nuts aside and went back to toasting the other nuts.

I was intrigued by the Masa chef's recipe, however, so before Jen got home I decided to work that angle. The Times piece had the chef cooking them in a little water, just enough to partially immerse the nuts, with salt. His recipe involves cooking the beans until all the water has evaporated out of the pan and the nuts are dry.

I went a little different direction, using half water and half liquid from an earlier beef and vegetable stir fry — along with not a little bit salt. I boiled out all the water the same way and tried one. Lo and behold, the gumminess had disappeared and the salty beefiness gave the nut some slight but not too overwhelming flavor. This was good.

I don't think it matters exactly what liquid you use — probably any generously salted gelatinous stock would work fine — or any slightly flavorful, slightly fatty liquid. All I used was old stir fry juice, and it tasted good. The toasted version is on the left and the Masa chef's recipe is on the right. We drank beer with these:

Ginkgo Nuts: Toasted Ginkgo Nuts and Boiled Ginkgo Nuts Braised in Stock and Salt

You'll notice the toasted nuts in the above picture are much darker than the first toasted trial — these were crunchy and less chestnut-like. I preferred the less-toasted version, and if I were to do this again, I'd make sure the nuts retained their softness and would pull them out of the oven sooner.

And a cleaned-up version of this post is on the cookery section of the website, in case you ever want to consult it.

Posted: November 9th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Feed | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,