Cream of Chestnut

2019 version - garnished with pan fried chopped chestnuts & decorated with gold pieces from Kanazawa :)

Ingredients:

Italian or Japanese Chestnut (the former being more fragrant while the latter being sweeter, my personal opinion)

Chicken and Ham Stock **

Cream Fraiche

** For Vegetarian version, replace chicken stock with vegetable stock or plain water


How to Make:

1. Make the soup base 1 day ahead by using fresh old chicken + chinese ham or ham hock, 1 carrot, 1 celery and 1 onion. Blanche chicken/ham hock first, for chinese ham, blanche with some puer tea leaves. Place the blanche chicken and ham with the veg to a clean pot, cover everything with sufficient water. After boiling, reduce to medium heat and cook for approx 3 hrs.

2. Remove ingredients and once soup is cool, store at fridge overnite. Next day, you can eeasily skim off fat on top.

3. Remove skins from chestnut (which takes a really long time...), blanche until soft. Chop them into smaller pieces.

4. Add chestnuts to the soup base, bring to boil, then puree in the blender in a few batches.

5. Sieve the puree into a clean pot. Adjust consistency by keep some clean soup base. In case, the puree is too thick, you can adjust by adding some soup base to the puree soup.

6. Adjust seasoning and bring to boil again. Serve with a small spoonful of cream friache on top.

Enjoy the chestnuts when they are in the best form - in Autumn/Winter of course!