OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and this weekly newsletter. Every week, Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian, food writer and ecologist, highlights different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. This week she offers a recipe for chestnut gnocchi with Italian sausage and escarole.

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Another day, another dumpling. I realize I made a dumpling last week too, but honestly, I could eat dumplings every day! You could have them every week for a year and never have a repeat — dumplings are that diverse. (And that’s not including controversial “dumplings” like burritos, corn dogs or Pop Tarts, which, don’t even get me started.) I make gnocchi fairly often, but these gnocchi are a little different — they’re made from chestnuts that I gathered in a cemetery. If you elect to forage your own chestnuts, just be sure you’re not picking up horse chestnuts. How can you tell the difference? Read on to find out!

Also, THANK YOU to everyone who shared the “Superabundant” newsletter over the past few weeks — and WELCOME to our new subscribers! Your fall and winter are about to get a whole lot cozier. (Sorry not sorry in advance for the heavy-handed use of food puns.)

Hungry for more? Get a bit of Italian Portland culinary history on the Produce Row episode of “Superabundant”

Dark days for diners

It’s bad enough that small, family-owned diners seem to be going the way of the dodo in Portland, but this week the Oregon-born chain Shari’s Café and Pies abruptly announced that they’ve shuttered all 42 of their Oregon locations. And now Denny’s has revealed its plan to close 150 locations before the end of 2025. The news sparked a huge discussion among OPB staffers about favorite greasy spoons and breakfast diner standbys (shouts went out to Cameo Cafe and Tom’s Pancake House in the Metro Area, but I have to add nods to Southern Oregon too — the chicken fried steak at Kozy Kitchen and the Apple Peddler’s biscuits and gravy are both solid).

Readers: If your favorite diner closed, what dish would you miss the most? Let me know in an email and maybe I can hack the recipe for a future newsletter.

Making dinner appear out of thin air

The MIT Technology Review shared that scientists are working on new ways to convert carbon dioxide into protein the way plants do — sort of. They’re growing hydrogen-­oxidizing bacteria in a sort of high-tech hydroponics garden, and then converting those bacteria into a protein slurry that can be used to make new types of meat analogs. If it all sounds a bit Matrix-y to you, just remember that we already use bacteria to make lots of foods more delicious and nutritious. (A kimchi grilled cheese sandwich on sourdough sounds pretty good right about now, come to think of it.) Besides, our guts are already well-populated with bacteria — and the bugs in your microbiome may even be controlling your mind.

A busy week for foodborne illnesses

In case you needed another reason to avoid McDonald’s, their Quarter Pounder has been linked to 49 cases of E. coli infections (including one death and a case reported in Oregon as of Oct. 23), due to either the beef patties or slivered onions that go on the burger. While you’re at it, you might want to avoid frozen breakfast foods until the dangerous listeria situation simmers down. Oh, and the packaged enoki mushrooms too. (And depending where you are, green onions. And maybe the seafood.)

The goodest things, in fact.

Last week I received an email from Lisa Power, who manages the seed library at Banks Public Library and had just read the story about Oregon beans that OPB reran. She had some of the beans from the now-defunct Ayers Creek Farm (the owners, the Boutards, relocated to the East Coast), but because these varieties are no longer being grown commercially she wanted to reserve them for gardeners who’d be willing to be seed stewards — to preserve the Boutards’ legume legacy and keep these unique varieties alive.

Seeds of the varieties Gaston Borlotto, Wapato White and Othello’s Pebbles went to Charlene Murdock, co-founder of the teaching farm Foodways at Nana Cardoon. From there, the seeds made their way to the environmental education group EdenAcres, to grow in their B-street Learning Garden in Forest Grove (home of the Tuality Plains Seed Library) and Sarah Newton, who runs Fox Farm at Free Orchards Elementary School in Cornelius. News of the “Ayers Creek Collection” spread like fireweed among seed savers, and other varieties developed by the Boutards have surfaced. Even better, a former Ayers Creek Farm employee is now managing the bean collection at B-street.

Anyway, I’ll be over here crying my eyes out because it’s just so heartwarming to see folks care this much about a humble bean. Find out more about these organizations at the links below:

City of Banks Seed Library

Foodways at Nana Cardoon

B-street Learning Garden

Fox Farm at Free Orchards Elementary School

🌱 Speaking of seeds, it was lovely to hear from so many of you last week — I’ll be mailing out garlic chive seeds to a whopping 20 readers! 🌱

Lately, in the “Superabundant” kitchen

✨ I saw a buy one/get one deal on pork tenderloins (I’m powerless against a BOGO!) so I tied and rubbed one down with coarse salt, black pepper and caraway seeds and roasted it on a bed of sliced onions and dried pears with a splash of stale rosé. When it was almost done I smeared it with homemade fig-plum sweet and sour sauce to glaze. The dried pears soaked up all the flavorful juices and got really jammy with the onions and fruit sauce.

✨ In the spirit of clearing freezer space (OK, I may have slightly overdone it on the BOGO pork), I pulled a tub of golubtsy filling that I’d stashed for a rainy day, but instead of using the seasoned rice and ground beef to make actual cabbage rolls, I just simmered chopped cabbage in the tomato sauce and then stirred in the rice/meat mixture. Sour cream and chopped fresh dill went on top, as always.

✨ I was sort of craving yakisoba but wanted a less gloopy-sweet sauce, so I made the Filipino version, pancit Canton, instead. (Happy Filipino-American History Month, by the way!) I used a lot of vegetables, but was also able to disappear a couple leftover grilled hot Hungarian sausages. The sausages worked pretty well in the dish since they’re not that different from longanisa, but I added a little five spice to give it more of a lap cheong flavor.

Recipe: Chestnut gnocchi with Italian sausage and escarole

You haven‘t really lived until you’ve nibbled a warm chestnut straight from its shell, with its nutty, earthy-sweet flavor and soft texture like a roasted yam.

In the United States we may associate chestnuts with winter holidays, but in the traditions of Catalonia (and elsewhere in the Iberian Peninsula), the humble chestnut is celebrated with a holiday called La Castañada (“the chestnut party”), which doesn’t just coexist with Halloween — it wholly dominates it. Honestly, it sounds more fun than doling out a bunch of child labor chocolate, and both flavor- and vibes-wise, a chestnut party definitely pairs better with a good old-fashioned bobbing for apples (or caramel apples, if slobbering into a communal bucket of floating Honeycrisps conflicts with your COVID-19 protocols).

The only downside is that chestnuts require so much work, y’all. First, you have to find and travel to the trees, then you have to collect the nuts, stubbing them out of their spiny hulls with the toe of your shoe. This is made a million times more pleasant if you bring along a friend with whom you may idly chat while scanning the ground (I brought my friend Claudia, who runs a company making home cheese kits and writes cookbooks; she’s an adventurous cook and always has a little tea to spill). Adding to the atmosphere was that we were foraging in the cemetery near my house without even realizing chestnuts’ connection to spooky season.

You might be tempted to pick up any shiny, auburn nut assuming it’s a chestnut, but once you learn the difference, it’s pretty easy to tell an edible chestnut from a poisonous horse chestnut. First, look at the hull surrounding the nut — does it look like a medieval mace, or a spiny sea urchin? A spiny bur is the ticket. Just to be sure, check the nut, too — if it’s smooth and round, leave it on the ground (or pick it up to play a game of conkers, or because it’s pretty and feels good in your hand). An American chestnut will have a pointed tuft at one end, terminating in a few stout little spines, making the nut resemble a cartoon bomb with a lit fuse.

Of course, if you don‘t have the time or proclivity (or don’t feel like spending an hour peeling them), store bought is fine — precooked, peeled and vacuum-sealed or jarred chestnuts will work just as well. Makes 1 pound of gnocchi, or 6-8 servings

Ingredients

8 ounces roasted chestnuts (about 6.5 ounces peeled)

1 ½ cups “00” pasta flour

Pinch of salt

3 eggs

1 teaspoon olive oil

8 ounces Italian sausage (sweet or hot; bulk or links with casings removed)

4 cloves garlic, minced

¼ cup sliced shallots or onion

1 cup heavy cream

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

⅛ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

½ cup finely grated crumbly cheese like Pecorino or Asiago cheese

Half a head of escarole, coarsely chopped

3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Instructions

1. Pulse the peeled chestnuts in a food processor until very finely chopped. It won’t be a perfectly smooth powder but it’ll feel more like fresh pastry dough — crumbly and dry, but sticky enough to smush together into a cohesive mass when you press it with your finger. You should end up with about 1 ½ cups of loosely packed chestnut meal.
2. Stir the chestnut meal together with the pasta flour and salt, then mix in the eggs with a fork, one at a time, until they’re broken up and fairly well combined. Turn the mass onto a floured surface and knead until a stiff dough forms, about 5 minutes. Form the dough into a thick disk, wrap tightly in plastic or wax wrap and let it rest for 15-20 minutes.
3. Divide the pasta dough into quarters, then roll each piece into a log and cut them into small, bite-sized pieces about an inch across. You don’t need any special equipment to roll the dough balls into gnocchi with ridges, but I have wooden butter paddles that work well. After you’ve rolled all the dough into gnocchi, cover them with a kitchen towel on the work surface.
4. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat, then crumble in the Italian sausage. Cook, stirring and breaking it up with a spoon, until it begins to brown, about 3-5 minutes. Add the garlic and shallots and cook for another minute, then add the cream, pepper and nutmeg. Bring the sauce to a simmer on the lowest setting.
5. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, then cook the gnocchi until they float but are still al dente, then transfer them with a slotted spoon directly to the sausage and cream mixture. Add about ½ cup of the pasta cooking liquid and the grated cheese to the sauce, increase the heat to medium low and cook the gnocchi to your desired doneness, another couple minutes. (They’ll stay a bit on the dense side, so don’t worry too much about overcooking them.)
6. Add the escarole and simmer until it’s wilted but still green, then taste and adjust salt as needed. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

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Note: A previous version of this newsletter stated the Tuality Plains Seed Library was housed at Fox Farm; it’s located at B Street Learning Garden. OPB regrets the error.