Castagnaccio

Well, I was offered some of the home-made chestnut flour from Tuscany, so I baked my own castagnaccio. I followed the recipe which my mother had used. She told me to use some more water than mentioned.
I love this dish, the flavour is delicious, and the smell is intoxicating when you're preparing it. It's very easy and quick to prepare. The only difficulty is obtaining the chestnut flour, which really determines the quality of the dish.


Serves 6

250 ml water
6 tbsp olive oil
100 g dried raisins, soaked in hot water
200 g chestnut flour
50 g pine nuts
50 g walnuts, peeled and chopped in big pieces
pinch of salt
pinch of rosemary

Put the chestnut flour in a big bowl, add salt and 2 tbsp olive oil.
Add water gradually while stirring with a fork, until you have obtained a smooth dough (as for a cake).
Drain the soaked raisins and add them to the dough.
Put some baking paper in a baking tin and grease it with 1-2 tbsp olive oil.
Spread the dough over the paper in a layer of max. 1 cm high.
Sprinkle pine nuts, walnuts and rosemary over this and 2 tbsp olive oil.
Bake for 30 min on 200°C, until cracks appear and the nuts are golden brown.
Pour off the excessive oil.

Although this dish doesn't contain any sugar, eggs and hardly any fat, it's pretty rich and you can serve it in small portions.
Go easy on the rosemary, so as not to spoil the dish with too strong a flavour.
Afterwards I found another recipe in Lorenza de Medici's 'ITALY The Beautiful Cookbook', which uses a lot more water, leaves out the walnuts and mixes most of the pine nuts through the dough. It also advocates eating the castagnaccio while it's still warm. Might try that next year, if I can get hold of another dose of that heavenly chestnut flour.

Chestnuts again

Tonight I prepared my first chestnuts of the season, hooray!
A simple soup to start with, using a previous recipe, with slightly different ingredients.

I used patisson from my mother's garden and also shallot and leek.

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.

Chestnut and pumpkin pie

Lyn sent me her mother's recipe for pumpkin pie. Inspired by this I made a new pumpkin pie, in which I also added chestnuts.


230 g puff pastry
200 g chestnuts
400 g pumpkin, chopped (weight without skin and seeds)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla seeds
juice of 1 lemon
1 dl cream
1 tsp butter

Peel the chestnuts. I've perfectioned my method for this:
Make an incision in the form of a cross at the top of the chestnuts. Make sure you cut deep enough.
Boil them in water for 5 min. Pour off the water but leave 0,5 cm in the pan. Leave the chestnuts in the pan with the lid on, so that they stay warm and moist. Take them out one by one to peel them.
When they are peeled, put them in a pan of boiling water again and let them simmer for 15-45 min. until they are soft.
In the mean time, boil or steam the pumpkin for 10-15 min. until soft.
Mash pumpkins and chestnuts together and add the other ingredients.
Roll out the puff pastry, put it in a buttered pie dish, cover with baking paper and beans and pre-bake for 10 min. at 220° C.
Remove baking paper and beans, add the filling, lower the heat to 180° C, and bake the pie for 20 min.

Lamb with chestnuts and pumpkin

Last weekend I went to my mother's house in the countryside with some friends. We picked chestnuts and walnuts and my mother also gave me apples and a pumpkin and home made quince jelly, all from the garden.
All of this tastes fantastic and I wondered what I could cook with it. So I checked my cooking bible, Claudia Roden's 'The book of Jewish food' and I found a recipe of lamb with chestnuts. I also found a recipe with pumpkin and chestnuts as a side dish for couscous, so I decided to combine things.
Peeling chestnuts is a real pain and it takes ages, but the result is worth it!



Lamb with chestnuts and pumpkin

Serves 3-4

600 g lamb meat
1 onion, chopped
sunflower oil
1 tsp cinnamon
1 chilli, chopped
20 chestnuts
500 g pumpkin, chopped

Cut the meat in cubes of around 3 cm.
Fry onion and chilli in oil on low heat until golden.
Raise the heat, add the meat and add pepper and salt. Fry the meat until brown on all sides.
Add boiling water and cinnamon. Let the mixture boil, then let it simmer for 1,5-2 h until the meat is very soft.
Make a cut in the form of a cross in each chestnut on top and boil them for 5 min. Peel them while they're still hot.
Add chestnuts and pumpkin to the meat and simmer for 10 min. until they are cooked.