not sure if this is the right part of the forum but I'll try it here...
conkers / horse chestnuts: can you eat them, or rather, can you do anything to them to make them edible?
just wondering as there are so many around, the kids don't seem interested in them these days, and I'm never one to turn down free food. So, if you can eat acorns, once the tannins have been removed, is it possible to process conkers into dinner?
HI
I found something in this myself last year, i belive that the answer is that you can use them.
This is what i found but if you use google you will find loads of stuff
The nuts are an important food crop in southern Europe, southwestern and eastern Asia, and also in eastern North America before the chestnut blight. In southern Europe in the Middle Ages, whole forest-dwelling communities which had scarce access to wheat flour relied on chestnuts as their main source of carbohydrates.
The nuts can be eaten candied, boiled or roasted; the former are often sold under the French name marrons glacés. One easy method for roasting is to cut a slit in the top of each nut and heat in a shallow container, tossing occasionally, at 400 °F for 10-15 minutes. The nuts must be slit as they tend to explode when roasted. They may also be pan-roasted or boiled.
Another important use of chestnuts is to be ground into flour, which can then be used to prepare bread, cakes and pasta.
Chestnut-based recipes and preparations are making a comeback in Italian cuisine, as part of the trend toward rediscovery of traditional dishes.
To preserve chestnuts to eat through the winter, they must be made perfectly dry after they come out of their green husk; then put into a box or a barrel mixed with, and covered over by, fine and dry sand, three parts of sand to one part of chestnuts. Any maggots in any of the chestnuts will emerge and work up through the sand to get to the air without damaging other chestnuts. Chestnuts to be grown in the spring need to be kept in moist sand and chilled over the winter.
Chestnuts should not be confused with Horse-chestnuts, which are used in the United Kingdom to play a game called conkers. Conkers, or Horse-chestnuts, are poisonous and are obtained from the tree of the same name. This i found on wikipedia but no idea what the difference is between them.
This was also readable http://cherrysenglishkitchen.typepad.com/cherrys_english_kitchen_c/2006/10/1.html
I've also got a huge tree on my lottie and they are everywhere - Oh well, if I cannot eat them I'll use them for walkways!!
Jitterbug
Ah, I feared that they would be poisenous :(
But have just gotten Ray Mear's Wild Food book for my buffday so will now be out on the scrounge for other delights. Amazed at the number of weeds that I've been pulling up off of the lottie that I could have eaten!
way cool......
Your welcome to come and eat all mine Si