https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhQ9HquDNEM
Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, since I'd gone out to shop for ordinary items such as butter and milk, and yogurt (to strain and use like cream cheese on the festive baked potatoes) and noticed that the Asian store has chestnuts, who could resist, I ended up with some at home.
And since I'd forgotten how to fix them to add to my stuffing on the festive day, I checked Craig Claiborne, who said boil for five minutes. That didn't seem like a lot, so I started boiling them, having cut into them to speed it up, not without hazard, I may say, not unlike trying to stab ice cubes.
Anyway, I looked up a couple of other sources who said not five minutes but forty-five! hm. So I checked Silver Palate's index for chestnut refs and found that her indexer is a big, well, it wasn't true -- it was all about store bought chestnut puree! I ask you. Anyway, I thought I'd test them after five, and it turns out Craig was right.
Sooooo allowing time for them to cool, with vivid memories of burnt fingers and tongue in childhood from roast chestnuts, except for the ones that exploded all over the living room, being roasted on an open fire. Which tells me that the guy who wrote that song had little experience with roasting chestnuts on an open fire. Not unlike culinary warfare, really.
Anyway, halfway through peeling them, I remembered why I don't often do this.
Labor intensive isn't the word. So I now have half of them chopped and ready to add to the stuffing, and half neatly bagged and frozen for later. This is why people like Claiborne had kitchen assistants. Very smart invention, the sous chef.
Simon was fun - thank you! I see there are a number of others available, so will have to check those out. Alas, I have never eaten chestnuts - I know, obviously I must be missing one of the finer things in life.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much - Simon's Cat made me laugh and laugh!
ReplyDeleteI've never ever had roasted chestnuts, although I recall trying to roast what I thought was a chestnut once when I was a child. The result was a horribly bitter and terrible item, and one nibble was enough. Now I wonder what on earth it really was!
Oriental groceries carry plastic bags of cooked, peeled chestnuts in the snack section. They're heavenly. If your local oriental grocery doesn't carry it, drive to a bigger one.
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