[Sca-cooks] Chestnuts - Revisited

[Heather M]

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:

> Hullo, the list!
>
> Okay, so what do people do with chestnuts? Apart from the usual  
> roasted, or in stuffing?
>
> I believe there's a brewet in either Taillevent or le Menagier (but  
> called "English") that calls for them, as well as some 14th-century  
> English recipes. I STR there's a recipe in Apicius that uses them in  
> a lentil dish that I liked.
>
> More recently there's a modern Italian cake that involves baking  
> sweetened puree with pine nuts (I wanna say it's called castignacci,  
> but I'm not sure this is an accurate memory, and my books are all  
> over the place -- I mean big-time -- at the moment while we rearrange  
> furniture yet again). This might easily be period, although I have no  
> direct evidence, and it's been alleged that the modern French Mont  
> Blanc aux marrons has period Italian forebears. This last is  
> basically a mound of milled or "riced" chestnut puree, sweetened and  
> flavored with vanilla, then coated with whipped cream. Oddly enough  
> it also sometimes turns up on the menus of the finer Chinese  
> restaurants (usually without the whipped cream), and chestnuts also  
> appear in the fillings of various steamed rice dumplings roughly  
> corresponding to tamales.
>
> Then there are candied chestnuts (not my fave), and chestnut flour  
> sometimes turns up around Passover one of the primary baking starches  
> for flourless cakes.
>
> Chestnut ice cream is good, too, and I assume one could make a sort  
> of sweet-potato pie thingy with them, too. Polenta.
>
> What have I left out?
>
> Adamantius

Maybe a good replacement for almonds in the Sabina Welserin's cinnamon 
tart? They're really starchy that I can recall....

Margaret Northwode, who's got some chestnuts in the freezer just now