Tuesday: Comforting Winter Stew

Chestnut-lentil soup with homemade biscuits.

In our pre-blog life, we had purchased chestnuts a few times and had always roasted them and eaten them plain. But this year we've discovered how versatile chestnuts are in cooking. Perhaps chestnuts have faded from the American culinary memory because of the blight, but good recipe ideas can be found in other countries, particularly Italy and Japan.

This thick soup, really more of a stew, combines chestnuts with brown lentils and carrots. The chestnuts and carrots both add a little sweetness and texture to the otherwise fairly standard lentil soup.

Biscuits are surprisingly easy and quick to make from scratch, and they require very few ingredients. You'll probably see them from time to time on this humble blog.