Edible chestnuts
It’s way over time for a recipe.* Also, I’m hungry.** And this time of year I always think of chestnuts. I love chestnuts. Although you can perfectly well get tinned chestnut puree all year round, and this is a chilly thing so not really suitable to November.*** Never mind. The point is there is a world beyond crumbled whole chestnuts in your Brussels sprouts.†
Chestnut and chocolate pudding††
Yes, it’s in horrible metric. But 300g chocolate is merely 3 100g bars of Green and Black’s, and over here anyway 435g is a standard size of chestnut puree tin. Also I have a kitchen scales which is in fact very sleek and pretty and a pleasure to use and it converts.
Oh, and this freezes beautifully. You might consider if it’s worth pre-slicing it, so you can just crack off a slab or two at a time: there’s a lot of good group food out there which you can’t do this to, so it’s very useful for those of us with small households and waistline problems. The original recipe says you can slice it frozen, with a knife dipped in hot water. Maybe they used a different kind of knife and a different kind of water. My experience is that this doesn’t work and makes a nasty smeary mess.
300g plain (dark) chocolate (semi-sweet cooking chocolate, approximately. Do I have to remind you you want good quality chocolate?)
435g can unsweetened chestnut puree
175g/6 oz slightly salted butter (call it 12 T: http://www.ez-calculators.com/measurement-conversion-calculator.htm )
175g/6 oz caster/superfine sugar (call it ¾ c). I made it with granulated once and it was not crunchy.
¼ c orange juice
1 tsp orange essence
You can use an ordinary big (9″) loaf tin, but if you have a drop-sided one, use it.††† Grease it, whatever it is.
You’re supposed to beat the puree on its own till it’s light and fluffy but my experience is that chestnut puree on its own does not get light and fluffy. I melt the butter and chocolate (gently‡) together and then pour it slowly into the puree, and beat like mad–use your electric mixer. Then beat in sugar. Then add orange juice and essence and beat again.
Pour and scrape the result into your loaf tin. Smooth the top [duh], cover with greaseproof paper and chill overnight at least, and in the cold part of your refrigerator. Then let the sides down and pluck it out. I find that in an ordinary loaf tin you can slice it in the tin and ease the individual slices out.
* * *
* Also, I have to get up at what passes in my case for the crack of dawn tomorrow morning–Connie and I are going to baby-sit young Roland and Jenny on a nice hack over the beautiful Hampshire countryside, which we have to get in before Jenny’s first lesson of the day. This could be extremely amusing in several different directions. In the first place, while Connie is a perfectly good trail horse, she is far from what you could call bombproof, and I think I told you that I was delighted when Jenny told me a few weeks ago that she’d taken her out on a hack and she had been shying constantly in every direction^ at shadows, falling leaves, imaginary pheasants^^ and so on: I mean, she does it to Jenny too. My guess would be that Roland will be better-mannered than she is. However the second gremlin in the soup is that Connie and Roland are seriously sweet on each other–Connie, drat her, has come back into season again, and they spend a lot of time murmuring fondly to each other through the bit of grating at Connie’s end of Roland’s stall. I have no idea how this is going to translate riding out together–in the usual run of things they both have a good attitude toward their work–but I’m sure it’s going to make some variation on a theme of oops, wheee and arrrrrgh.
Meanwhile it’s already late in the evening because I’ve been ringing handbells. . . .
^ Simultaneously.
^^ She is, in the curious way of horses, usually rather good about real pheasants.+ The answer to this would be that it’s not an imaginary pheasant, she wouldn’t be frightened of a pheasant, it’s an imaginary tiger. This would make a certain amount of sense if she didn’t also shy dramatically at butterflies and dandelion clocks and so on. Okay, wait, the butterflies are the eyelashes of the blinking dragon++ who is invisible except for his eyelashes–this is a story passed down through thousands of years of domestic horse life from mare to foal. And the dandelion clocks are the subterranean goblin outpost antennae. Okay. Got it now.
+ I said usually
++ Not the friendly kind of dragon
** But then, I usually am hungry. Sigh. Menopause. Lose Your Interest in Food or Gain a Whole New Wardrobe.
*** Unless you’re in Oz, of course, or some other place down there.
† I also love crumbled whole chestnuts in my Brussels sprouts.
†† No, not an ideal recipe for a crabby menopausal woman who suddenly finds herself gaining weight by profligate breathing. I’m sure typing the dadblatted recipe is going to cost me a pound or two. At the signing last week I ate two tiny brownie-y things, one spider^, and a glass of hot chocolate. And I had carrots and hummous for supper, going home on the train. And I was almost two pounds up next day. Arrrrgh.
^ No, no–it’s a kind of butter cookie
††† I only have one–cupboard space is limited–and it’s too small. After agonies of custard cups for the overflow I just used an ordinary loaf tin which works fine, although you have to be a little careful. You’ll feel safer using drop-sided.
‡ Chocolate does burn easily, and it will taste scorched before it burns. But it doesn’t burn or taste scorched as easily as its reputation says it does, and melting it with butter gives you a much better quality of barrel to roll over Niagara in.
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