Chestnut soup

I kept a few chestnuts back from my last chestnut-cooking foray. Then started brewing up this recipe for soup. I might have used celeriac (or maybe celery) instead of celery seed if I had it, but the celery seed was quite effective as an essence of celery.

6 medium-large chestnuts
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, fairly finely chopped
1/4 tsp celery seed
1/4 tsp anise seed
few grinds of white pepper
1/4 cup champagne (or white wine)
1/4 cup apple sauce (would have used fresh apple but had none)
1 bay leaf
~1/2 tbsp chopped parsley (and more for garnish)
1 cup veg stock
salt

Submerge the whole chestnuts in boiling water and leave for ~30 min. Cut each in half and remove the outer shell and as much of the inner shell as you can, then resubmerge in boiling water for another 10 min or so before removing the rest of the skin (which can be a right fiddle - don't do this in a hurry).

Once the chestnuts are peeled, heat the oil in a medium saucepan, add the onion and cook gently for a few minutes, until softened and transparent but not coloured. Grind the anise and celery seeds then then add to the pan, stirring until fragrant (~ 1 min). Add a little white pepper, the champagne, apple, bay, parsley, peeled chestnuts and stock, bring to the boil and then simmer gently for ~30 min, until the chestnuts are soft.

Remove the pan from the heat, transfer the contents to a blender and blend until very smooth. Taste for seasoning and add salt to taste. Reheat gently to serve, and sprinkle with a little chopped fresh parsley.


Very creamy and satisfyingly savoury. If I had more chestnuts perhaps I'd have added a few more and / or scaled up the recipe - this made just about enough for a taster for two, but not much, and it could have been a tad thicker / more chestnutty.

Pickled green tomatoes (and grapes)

With my harvest of green tomatoes, I decided to pickle some (using my trusty faux-Grillo brine) as well as making jam. In fact, I still have some left even after all this - perhaps frying is also on the cards, or exciting sauce, or who knows what else? The grapes were left over from my last bunch of Concord grapes of the season - I hung onto the unripe ones to try pickling them.

~1 lb of green tomatoes
~10 unripe Concord grapes
~20 mint leaves
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp celery seeds
1/4 tsp red chilli flakes
3/8 cup cider vinegar
3/8 cup white vinegar
1 1/4 cups water
3/4 tbsp salt

Slice the green tomatoes thickly and pack into two (~400g size) jars. Add the Concord grapes and mint leaves to one / the fennel seeds, celery seeds and chilli flakes to the other. Put the vinegars, water and salt into a small saucepan and bring just to the boil. Pour over the jar contents, making sure to fill right up to ~1 cm from the brim, jiggling the contents to minimize air bubbles. Put lids on while the contents are still hot, then let cool before storing in the fridge.

Sweet, salty pickled cucumber slices

We had sooo many cucumbers: some still from last week's CSA, some from this week's, and even more because we picked up another CSA for a friend who is out of town. In total about 12 medium-large cucumbers. So many! I decided to pickle some of them. I have promised S I will try and make Grillo's-style picked cucumbers, but we had no grape leaves or dill, so that is sidelined. I wasn't feeling very creative, and liked the use of celery seed in this recipe (and had all the ingredients), so I just followed it.

(Made one large and one medium jar)

2 lb cucumbers, sliced 1/4-inch thick (use smaller ones if you have them)
2 sweet onions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup large-crystal sea salt
1 cup sugar
1 cup distilled white vinegar
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
2 tbsp mustard seed (used 1 tbsp brown mustard seed and 1 tbsp yellow)
2 tbsp coriander seed
1/2 tsp celery seed

Put the cucumber, onion and salt in a large bowl and mix. Cover with ice* and let stand at room temperature for two hours, mixing at least once along the way. Put sugar, vinegar and seeds in a large pan and bring to the boil. Rinse the cucumbers and onions and drain well. Add the cucumber mixture to the vinegar mixture and bring almost back to a boil. Remove from heat, let cool a little, then transfer to clean jars with non-metallic lids. Store in the fridge for up to a month: they will be ready to eat after ~24 hours.

*I didn't really have any ice (just 3 cubes), and I wasn't quite sure what it was for anyway, so I just set this up without ice (well, with 3 cubes), and made sure to rinse the veg well when their salting time was up. The pickle did come out quite salty - wonder if this was why?


I wasn't sure about these at first - thought they were a bit too salty, and that perhaps there was a few too many seeds. But despite these considerations, S has been enjoying them from the start, and I think they have matured a little after several days. Still, the next batch will contain less / different seeds and I will wash out the salt even more thoroughly (and/or use less) - think my next batch will contain turmeric, garlic, mustard seed, celery seed, chilli flakes, perhaps anise or fennel seed, or peppercorns...

2 lb cucumbers, sliced 1/4-inch thick (use smaller ones if you have them)
2 sweet onions, thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, sliced lengthwise
1/4 cup large-crystal sea salt
1 cup sugar
1 cup distilled white vinegar
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
2 tbsp mustard seed
1 tsp celery seed
1/2 tsp chilli flakes

Sweet and sour red lentils

 

It has been raining since Monday.  Now it's Thursday, and it's wetter than ever.  It felt like weather for comfort food.  I decided that = dal.  I was looking for a red lentil dal, with the thought at the back of my mind that I'd like to use some of the fenugreek I bought the other day.  I came across this recipe by Madhur Jaffrey on the BBC, and it caught my eye - it includes a few of my current favourite things (tamarind, fenugreek, nigella, fennel seed...).

250g/9oz/1¼ cups red lentils
¼tsp ground turmeric
2 tbsp mustard or any other vegetable oil (used regular veg oil)
½ tsp brown mustard seeds
½ tsp panch phoran (= mixture of fennel seed, nigella, cumin seed, fenugreek and celery seed or black mustard seed - I didn't have celery seed so used a mixture of the first four)
4 hot dried red chillies (used 2 as thought they might be super hot)
1 bay leaf
1¼-1½ tsp salt
2 tbsp thick tamarind paste or to taste
1 tbsp sugar or to taste

Wash the lentils in several changes of water until the water runs clear. Put them in a medium-sized pan with the turmeric and mix. Cover with 1l/1¾pt/4½ cups water. Bring the lentils to the boil over a medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to low, cover partially and simmer for 40 minutes or until the lentils are tender. Stir now and then during the last 10 minutes. When the lentils are cooked, mash with a spoon to a pulp-like consistency.

Heat the oil in a large, wide, preferably non-stick pan or wok over a medium-high heat. When hot, add the mustard seeds. As soon as they pop, a matter of seconds, add the panch phoran, chillies and a bay leaf. Stir and fry for 5-6 seconds or until the chillies darken in colour. Add the cooked lentils, 150ml/5fl oz water and the salt. Stir to mix. Add the tamarind paste, a little at a time to get the sourness you desire. Add just enough sugar to balance the sourness. Bring to the boil. Turn the heat to low and simmer for 8-10 minutes. The finished dal should have the consistency of a thick purée.


This is sooo good.  The red lentils become this thick, lumpy, earthy paste, and the sweet and sour and spicy flavours mingle into that and just make it all incredible.  Didn't really mash / puree it that hard - quite liked it with still-discernible lentils in it, and red lentils turn to mush with little encouragement anyway.  Could have been more brave with the chilis.  Love how much tamarind it has in it.