It may have been a horrible year for tree fruit and grapes, but the nuts are bountiful and to my great surprise, the tail end of tomatoes and haricots verts are overlapping with the decidedly wintry treat of piping hot chestnuts for dessert every night after dinner, and bittersweet walnuts to snack on throughout the day.
Of course, the pleasures of nuts have their downside. If you have ever attempted to harvest chestnuts, you like me have a deepend respect for the French commitment to eating them in massive quantities. Like the first hominoid to drink the milk of a cow or eat the foot of a chicken, one has to be both inspired and fearless to attempt to free a cluster of marrons from the angry spines in which they're encased. Believe me, you have to really love chestnuts.
And the Bessiere's do. And so, to honor their love of chestnuts, I spent an hour or two each afternoon crouched low to the ground, swatting at the dried autumn leaves with two sticks to reveal the evil little urchins and then clumsily pry them open. The process brought to mind unpleasant memories of finger-prick blood tests at the pediatritian, and the distict recollection of being told at the age of 12 or so that I would never again be subjected to a needle being poked into my index finger. So why was I, a pink and fleshy mammal, attempting the work better suited to gigantic mutant beetles or leather palmed apes with rocks? And woefully ill equipped- I briefly considered whether the otter, floating on it's back in the water, cracking open nuts on it's exposed belly, would have come up with better tools for harvesting chestnuts.
Because they're delicious, and four giant trees plop them all over the wheat field Phillippe is soon to turn, and Mamilette promised to give me her recipe for her famous chestnut cake if I came back with three buckets full.
500 g of chestnuts (boiled and peeled)
6 small eggs
200 g sugar
1 pinch of salt
vanilla (or a pocket of sucre vanilee)
Puree the chestnuts and incorporate the sugar, egg yolks and vanilla.
Beat the whites into soft peaks (un nuage pas trop ferme) and fold in to the chestnut mixture.
Bake for 1 hour at medium heat- 325 in a porcelain dish or pyrex pan.
Posts
