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.

Wednesday: Braised carrots and chestnuts

Carrots and chestnuts braised with fennel seeds, served on wild rice.

Another nice use of chestnuts: pairing them with carrots was another way to emphasize their natural sweetness. The gentle anise flavor of fennel seeds was a surprisingly subtle complement. Overall we actually found this dish more complex than would be implied by the simplicity of its ingredients.

We basically followed this recipe, though we again roasted the chestnuts instead of boiling them, and we omitted the thyme (though it probably would have been nice if we'd had some).

PSA: Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

Chestnuts are a lovely seasonal item that shows up at least a couple times a year at farmer's markets around here. They're dissimilar to other nuts due to their much higher sugar content and their soft, chalky texture when cooked; because of their natural sweetness, they are equally at home as either dinner or dessert. You can use them in many different types of recipes - like the rice we made, or a creamed chestnut soup - or you can just eat them out of hand. But often the first step is roasting them, so in honor of the coming holiday season we thought we'd give you a little tutorial here.

While we hear that you CAN roast chestnuts on an open fire, we prefer to do it in a hot oven. First, preheat the oven to 425F. Then set each glossy chestnut on its flat side and gently score an "X" into the round side with a knife. It is easiest to do this with a serrated knife, using a sawing motion - just pressing down on these slippery little nuts with a normal blade can be tricky.



Set the chestnuts in a single layer on a foil-covered baking tray, scored side up. Drizzle some drops of water on the chestnuts with your fingers - the exact amount isn't critical, but it'll help to keep them moist.

Place the tray in the oven and let the chestnuts roast for ten minutes. Then remove the tray and flip all the nuts so that their scored side is down. Replace the tray in the oven and let it go another ten minutes.



When the chestnuts are done roasting, they'll look a bit like the above: some of the skins will begin peeling off on their own. The meat of the nuts will be soft and somewhat flaky.

Now is the fussy part - peeling the chestnuts. Grab the skin of each chestnut at the "X" where it has already begun to peel and tug it off the meat. Sometimes the skins will fall right off, and some will need some assistance. So far we haven't found any reliable predictor of which it will be...



But when you're done, you'll have a bowl full of warm, golden, aromatic roasted chestnuts to enjoy!

Sunday: Seasonal Flavors

Warm spiced rice with roasted chestnuts and broccoli.

This recipe uses the traditional fall flavors of cinnamon and clove along with delicious freshly-roasted chestnuts. The warm spices draw out the natural sweetness of chestnuts even more.

These particular chestnuts are an Asian/American hybrid. Sadly, this country suffered a massive chestnut blight in the early part of the 20th century which basically wiped out native American chestnut trees, so you aren't likely to see real 100% American chestnuts around.