Champagne and Chestnuts

You know the holidays are just around the corner; stores are starting to play that proverbial chestnut, “The Christmas Song,” also known as “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.”
 
As Nat King Cole’s version is probably the best, you might put on the track as you read this elegiac to one of my favorite seasonal foods – the chestnut.
 
I grew up in a home where chestnuts were revered. At this time of year, my mother and I spent more time preparing dishes for Thanksgiving and Christmas with them than we ever did at the table enjoying them.
 
The chestnut dish, which took the longest time to prepare, was the chestnut-and-bread-stuffing for my mother’s succulent roasted turkey. We made it twice a year, once for Thanksgiving, once for Christmas.
 
When served, the stuffing always produced as many exclamations as there were guests at the table. But our labor of love – opening 80 chestnuts by hand to retrieve their sweet meat for the stuffing – was agony, not ecstasy.
 
In those days, before the microwave, before you could Google 20 variations on a theme to search for a simpler recipe, this is how we shelled chestnuts:
 
Using a sharp paring knife, we made an ‘X’ on the flat side of each chestnut, cutting deep enough to slice through the tough outer shell and the dark inner skin. Then we placed the chestnuts, X-side down, in a shallow pan of water and baked the chestnuts about 30 minutes at 350°F.
 
This technique produced a lot of very hot nuts. And burned fingers, too, as we picked and pried open the shells to expose the inner nut. The problem was that the inner skin often adhered to the nut as though welded on with Martha Stewart’s glue gun.
 
Our fingers were raw from peeling seven-, or eight-dozen chestnuts. Following this Thanksgiving’s effort, my mother needed weeks of remedial nail repair. Her fingers just started looking good again by the time Christmas rolled around and then it was time to repeat our chestnut folly.
 
Years later, my friend Rony (yes, the same Rony who dreamed up, and who operates, Poetry of Food) taught me a much more efficient way to open chestnuts, which doesn’t leave one’s fingers looking like they’ve worked a lifetime in a photo darkroom, developing film in Kodak’s D-76 solution.
 
Rony’s method produces a chestnut that quickly, effortless, slips out of its carapace:
 
Using a sharp paring knife, slice off the pointed end of the chestnut, enough to create a small opening. Also, on the curved, rounded side of the nut, make a slit perpendicular to the cut-off tip. Cut through the shell and inner skin, but do not cut into the flesh of the nut. Place on a microwavable dish and microwave, uncovered, on high for three minutes. Voila! Steaming hot chestnuts in THREE MINUTES!
 
Let them cool and see how easily the nuts shed their inner skin and shell; like a Victoria’s Secret model shedding her runway garments, which is to say quickly and elegantly.
 
If you don’t have a microwave handy, you can prepare the chestnuts in the same manner and roast them in a 350 F degree oven 20 minutes.
 
This holiday put out a bowl of chestnuts for guests as an hors d’oeuvre; it’s an original and tasty way to complement drinks as you stand around waiting for dinner. Serve with a light-medium bodied Champagne like Moët et Chandon, or Gosset Grande Reserve, a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. They work equally well.
 
If you can’t get your fill of seasonal chestnuts this way, here are other elegant options:
 
The quintessential French dessert that used chestnuts is the Mont-Blanc aux Marrons, which is French poetic license, for “Mont-Blanc of Chestnuts.” Leave it to the French to equate the shape of a mounded puree of chestnuts, crowned with snow-like crème Chantilly, to Mont-Blanc.
 
Still don’t have your fill of chestnuts? You can always make, or purchase, marrons glaces in high-end gourmet retail stores. These candied chestnuts have been making mouths happy since the 15th century, when they first appeared in Piedmont, Italy.
 
In fact, I saw street vendors selling roasted chestnuts and candied chestnuts on many street corners in many small towns on my recent visit to Piedmont. Fortunately, some things never change. And lucky are we, who are marronophiles, that they don’t.
 
 
Mont-Blanc with Crème Chantilly Recipe