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rinds of white pepper about 1 4 teaspoon if you have smoked salt available use it here 3 cook according to the directions for your particular grits if you have leftover corn cob stock use it supplementing with water if needed 4 continue to cook and stir the grits until they are thoroughly done and very thick like mashed potatoes you may need to cook longer than directed to get the grits thick enough 5 spread the grits into a couple of buttered loaf pans or a square cake pan and chill them for at least an hour until they are well set the grits should be about half an inch thick in the pan 6 use a table knife to cut the chilled grits into one inch squares and turn them out into a roasting pan toss them with soft butter or olive oil and bake them at 350º for 20 minutes or until crispy on the outside it is also possible to fry them in a pan but they tend to fall apart because they are more fragile than polenta squares 7 croutons should be room temperature or warm but not hot when you serve the soup you want to keep the soup cool croutons may be reheated if needed popcorn topping 1 notice that popcorn is hard because it has been allowed to mature before harvest and the once liquid endosperm has been divided into separate cells containing the previously free floating nuclei popcorn is a variety of flint corn so it has a round end without the depressed center seen in dent corn the nutritive endosperm of popping corn is much starchier than sweet corn would ever get although popcorn seems very dry there is some residual water inside when heated that water becomes steam and swells the starch until it bursts the kernel open 2 pop the popcorn using your favorite method admire the fluffy white expanded endosperm 2 butter and salt the popcorn generously using about 4 tablespoons of melted butter assembling the soup 1 pour the chilled soup into bowls 2 scatter several grits croutons over the soup most will sink 3 top generously with popcorn and grind some black pepper over the top 4 serve immediately to maintain the contrasts in temperature and texture references and resources my favorite sources of stone milled grits are anson mills and nora mills anson mills also sells popcorn and their website has several interesting pages about the history and botany of the foods they mill doebley j 1990 molecular evidence and the evolution of maize economic botany 44 3 6 27 doebley j f goodman o m stuber c w 1986 exceptional genetic divergence of northern flint corn american journal of botany 73 1 64 69 emerson t e hedman k m simon m l fort m a witt k e 2020 isotopic confirmation of the timing and intensity of maize consumption in greater cahokia american antiquity 85 2 241 262 kennett d j prufer k m culleton b j george r j robinson m trask w r gutierrez s m 2020 early isotopic evidence for maize as a staple grain in the americas science advances 6 23 eaba3245 nickerson n h 1954 morphological analysis of the maize ear american journal of botany 87 92 weatherwax p 1916 morphology of the flowers of zea mays bulletin of the torrey botanical club 43 3 127 144 mberkery1 cc by sa 4 0 https creativecommons org licenses by sa 4 0 via wikimedia commons share this share on tumblr opens in new window tumblr share on facebook opens in new window facebook email a link to a friend opens in new window email share on linkedin opens in new window linkedin share on x opens in new window x share on pinterest opens in new window pinterest share on reddit opens in new window reddit like loading this entry was posted in botany lab of the month flavor fruit recipes vegetables and tagged fruit structure katherine preston morphology recipe on august 10 2022 by katherineapreston the adoration of the pine nut 6 replies it s the winter holiday season when halls are bedecked with garlands of evergreens sprigs of holly and bunches of mistletoe to remind us that there is life in the darkness and love to be shared this year katherine has added another symbolic plant to her own holiday list pine nuts they are more precious this year than ever i first started using pine nuts in holiday baking for the simple reason that they taste like pine and thus add a christmas tree note that almonds do not a deeper significance was not on my mind but pine nuts are so interesting botanically that i always slice some of them open to look for tiny pine embryos inside and that triggers some nostalgia for conifer week in the botany lab i taught as a graduate student along with the best co ta ever specifically i think about an odd conversation with one of the students which for years was nothing but another funny story only now decades later do i understand that this student s observations have something to teach us about the true meaning of pine nuts the remarkably unfiltered conversation happened after our student while dissecting a pine nut had experienced a double epiphany he finally understood the details of sexual reproduction in pines and he therein discovered a pathetically apt metaphor for his love life i can still see the way he dropped his shoulders as dejection slid across his face his exact words are lost after so many years but he basically confided to us that like a pine seed he always invested a little too much and a little too early in the promise of love or at least sex which might never be fulfilled lessons from pine sex both pines and flowering plants make seeds however they don t feed their embryos the same way pines and other gymnosperms pack a fat lunch in anticipation of an embryo whereas flowering plants typically wait for successful fertilization and only then build up a food reserve for the embryo pines invest in an uncertain future while flowering plants hold back and hedge their bets our student thought that his was a losing strategy and that he should behave more like a flowering plant but i m not sure i like to imagine that someone found his earnest vulnerability charming and that he has found the loving partnership he was looking for no matter what happened in his case however this i now know for certain sometimes in life you have to muster the courage to invest fully even recklessly in hope i think that s a pretty good message for the short days of winter the full story of pine reproduction starts with the story of seeds which is very complicated and still not fully resolved but here it is in a nutshell seeds were an incredibly successful evolutionary innovation because they took a process that depended on wet soil or water pooling on bark or in sidewalk cracks and brought it inside a protective shell that remained on the parent plant and could function without free water the ancestors of seed plants were similar to today s ferns in that they shed spores that germinated in moisture and grew into tiny plants that made eggs and swimming sperm there are variations on this basic system throughout the plant kingdom but ferns are a familiar example in ferns the large frondy generation is called the sporophyte spore plant because it makes spores spores result from meiosis so they contain half as many chromosomes per cell as the sporophyte does spores germinate and grow into flat green plants about the size of a lentil these are called gametophytes because they make gametes eggs and sperm under the right conditions eggs and sperm meet and the result is a new sporophyte the tree in the center is a flat topped italian stone pine pinus pinea on the stanford campus pine trees are also sporophytes but they hold onto their female spores which develop into egg producing female gametophytes inside the seeds on the scales of their cones the male spores are shed as pollen grains with sperm producing cells inside whereas free swimming fern sperm cells get nowhere without a film of water between themselves and some eggs pine sperm packaged into pollen grains can float through the air towards more distant eggs although non seed plants have done well evolutionarily mosses and ferns are especially diverse widespread and abundant the seed habit has freed gymnosperms and angiosperms from some ecological constraints and has undoubtedly contributed to their success in a range of habitats what is a pine nut for all its oily goodness botanically a pine nut is not a nut at all it is a seed and without its shell the seed coat a pine nut is essentially nothing but female gametophyte often with a cute little embryo inside bearing tiny pine needles long before it gets to that point however the gametophyte has to do what its name calls for it makes eggs two of them and it also accumulates a lot of nutrients for a potential embryo a typical commercial pine nut is about two thirds fat by weight and one third protein and carbohydrates a tree invests in making hundreds or thousands of those energy rich structures each season even though only some of the eggs will be fertilized i don t know what proportion of the ovules immature seeds are actually fertilized on a typical tree but in a bag of pine nuts it is sometimes hard to find any with an embryo inside other times most of the seeds i open up do contain baby pines pine nuts are worth dissecting in your kitchen because they give you a rare glimpse into the evolutionary history outlined above by contrast you will never see the female gametophyte of a walnut pecan almond hazelnut peanut or cashew at least not in your kitchen in flowering plants the female gametophyte has evolved to be just a handful of cells and when we eat an angiosperm seed we are eating some combination of embryo and that special made just in time tissue called the endosperm conifer week in your kitchen just for auld lang syne i gathered and photographed some of the materials we might have used during conifer week in botany lab so that you can follow along at home if you have your own pine nuts that s even better epiphanies are encouraged but not required commercial pine nuts are harvested from natural stands of a few large seeded species european pine nuts come from the italian stone pine pinus pinea which is planted as an ornamental in other mediterranean type climates including fortunately the campus of stanford university where i teach squirrels are also a conspicuous part of the flora and fauna at stanford and they had already taken most of the seeds out of the cones that i picked up in fact pine nut processors usually harvest cones directly from the tree before their scales have opened up and the cones are allowed to dry at a safe distance from seed predators unfortunately the remaining seeds i found stuck inside their cones and spurned by the squirrels had become moldy so all the photos here of gametophytes and embryos are from pine nuts i bought those were harvested in china and came from a different species the korean pine pinus koraiensis seed poking out from between cone scales for most of their development between pollination and seed release pine cones keep their scales tightly closed you can usually find cones in various stages of development on a tree because the whole process can take two or three years when seeds are mature the scales of most species open up and the seeds can be seen peeking out from between them in pine species with small seeds there is a prominent wing on each seed and seeds flutter out away from the parent plant italian stone pines have very large seeds whose useless vestigial wings detach from the seeds easily the shell of a pine nut is nothing but a hard thick seed coat its only protection against the outside world this is what it means to be a gymnosperm a naked seed by contrast the shells of other nuts like pecans almonds or pistachios are part of the angiosperm fruit wall that surrounds the seeds and their seed coats are very thin most pine nuts are sold as bare gametophytes without their seed coats if you look at their pointed tips you can see a small opening where the pollen grains would have settled in to germinate and send out their pollen tubes pine gametophytes make two eggs in special chambers archegonia but usually the first egg to be fertilized is the only one that ultimately develops i have never found twin embryos inside a pine nut but it does happen twinning can also result when one embryo splits lengthwise early in development if you have any pine nuts to dissect it s best to use a razor blade because kitchen knife blades are a little too thick to do the job without mangling the embryo a longitudinal section starting at the pointed tip reveals the embryo inside above row of pine gametophytes with embryos below embryos removed from the gametophytes here s where it gets really interesting recall that one of the main functions of the female gametophyte besides making the eggs is to nourish the embryo in other words once the embryo starts to grow it basically eats the gametophyte it does this with the help of the suspensor a column of disposable embryonic cells that push the main part of the new plant forward into the gametophyte so that it can absorb its nutrients once the embryo has established a distinct leafy end and root end the root starts to grow back towards the suspensor and it crushes it you can usually find the stringy dried up suspensor in the mature pine nut one of the things that makes pine nut embryos so adorable is the set of tiny needle leaves at their tips when the embryo becomes a seedling these will emerge to photosynthesize and take over the job of feeding the young plant pine nuts at christmas italian stone pines pinus pinea are native to the european side of the mediterranean coast in italy they occur on the northern half of both sides of the peninsula and in the heel of the boot the range continues westward along the southern coast of france and into spain and portugal where native stands are scattered throughout the interior viñas et al 2016 pine nuts were never domesticated and are generally not even cultivated in orchards they are usually harvested from natural stands as they have been for tens of thousands of years in southern europe there is even evidence from a spanish cave that neanderthals collected and presumably ate p pinea seeds finlayson et al 2006 modern humans kept up the practice and many traditional foods from the region feature pine nuts pine nuts have a distinctive conifer flavor dominated by pinene limonene hexanal camphene and careen mcgee 2020 and they work well in both savory and sweet dishes where they hold their own against strong herbs and spices there is of course pesto from genoa in the heart of pine nut country but also italian cakes pinolata and christmas cookies pignoli a specialty in parts of provence is the sweet tarte aux pignons in catalonia all saints day november 1 is celebrated with pine nut confections called panellets none of these traditional recipes includes chocolate likely because they predate its arrival into europe but i really like to bake with a combination of chocolate orange and pine nuts especially at christmas puff pastry tart with leeks bleu cheese arug...