15 November 2006

Chestnut soup and Danish apple dessert

Today I had lots of time to cook, hooray! So I invented a soup with the last of my chestnuts.


Chestnut soup

Serves 2-3

150 g chestnuts
1 leek, chopped
1 sprig of white celery, chopped
1 small potato, chopped
1 shallot, chopped
1/2 tsp. vegetable stock
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 bay leaf
thyme

Peel the chestnuts (see Chestnut and pumpkin pie) and cut them in 4.
Fry the shallot in olive oil for a few min. Add leek, celery, bay leaf and thyme, and fry for a few more min. Then add potato and chestnuts and fry for a few more min.
Add boiling water, vegetable stock, salt and a lot of pepper.
Let the soup boil, then let it simmer on low heat for 15-45 min. until the chestnuts are soft.
The taste is just divine!

For dessert I finished off the apples from my mother's garden with a recipe from Claudia Roden's 'The book of Jewish food'.


Danish apple dessert

4 apples
175 g sugar
3 tbsp. flour
3 eggs
150g ground almonds
1 tsp. cinnamon

Peel the apples and cut them in pieces. Cook them with a few tbsp. water until they are soft. Mash them with a wooden spoon.
Add 75 g sugar and flour and 2 eggs and cinnamon. Mix this well.
Grease a tin and pour in the apple mixture.
Mix almonds, 100g sugar and 1 egg into a paste.
Rub a little oil (e.g. sunflower) on your hands to avoid that the paste will stick.
Take pieces of the paste and press them flat between your hands.
Cover the apples with these pieces.
Bake in the oven at 180° C for 25 min. until the paste is brown.
You can eat this hot or cold.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really great, esp the chestnuts, and pics like you want to delve right into that food..

Oleandri said...

This soup is pretty rich. After one bowl you cannot eat anything else any more ;-)
Maybe next time I will double the quantities of the vegetables (for the same amount of chestnuts), so it's a little more diluted.