It Tastes Like Winter

I think chestnuts are an underutilized nut in the American diet. Previous to this fall, it had been at least two decades since I'd had anything featuring chestnut. Last month, while Donna and I were celebrating our Anniversary down in Williamsburg, we were served a chestnut icecream with our dinner. Tonight, Donna made a brusselsprout (another under-used food) hash for dinner that featured a heavy use of chestnuts.

There's just something nifty about chestnuts. They've got this lovely, delicate, earthy-sweet flavor. It lends itself well to both sweets and to savory food-stuffs.

Tonight's hash was something that Donna just winged. Basically, she took her usual brusselsprout hash, and enhanced it with white wine and chestnuts:


Ingredients:
• 10 chestnuts
• 2 pints fresth brussel sprouts (trim, cut in half, then slice thin)
• 6-8oz crimini mushrooms (sliced)
• Penzeys Fox Point seasoning
• dry white wine (recommend a sauvignon blanc)
• extra virgin olive oil
• butter (a good, rich, European-style is best)


Chestnut prep:

1. Slice an X into the flat side of each chestnut
2. Scatter nuts onto flat baking sheet and roast at 425 degrees for 15-25 minutes
3. Let cool enough to handle, then peel.
4. Chop chestnut meat into crumbles and set aside

Mushroom prep:

1. Sauté sliced mushrooms in large skillet in a mixture of olive oil and butter
2. Season with fresh-ground black pepper and liberal dash of Fox Point seasoning as they cook
3. Cook till browned
4. Remove mushrooms to bowl and set aside

Cook:

1. In same skillet, heat and melt 1Tbsp. of butter and 1 Tbsp. of olive oil
2. Add brussel sprouts and saute till they edges begin to brown (about 8 minutes)
3. Add half cup of white wine and let cook till wine is mostly gone.
4. Season to taste with more Fox Point.
5. Add in chestnuts and mushrooms, stir well and heat through
6. Serve

The hash worked very well with a nice, rare sirloin (in our household, we generally use bison, but standard beef would likely do, as well. Garnished with some locally-sourced dark cherry tomatoes. Served the meal with red wine (the Vicious Petit Sirah's cranberry notes were a very nice complement both to the hash and to the sirloin).

Brusselsprout/Chestnut Hash with Bison Sirloin

Smell vs. Taste

Yesterday's pork vindaloo was awesome. Unfortunately, thirty hours later and the house still kinda smells like rancid swack. Oh well. The price you pay for good food.

Where'd They Go

Either Donna didn't make enough eclairs or she gave too many away. Dammit, those were good.

Argh.

Wasted Weekend Redeemed?

Ok, so, this weekend has been an utter waste. I mean, two days into a three day weekend and all I've accomplished is sawing a lotta wood (figurative). At least Donna was able to do something constructive in the form of tonight's dinner: a pan-seared pork tenderloin that was then liberally sprinkled with Penzies Bavarian seasoning and then slow-roasted and served with a nice pan-sauce of white wine, shallots, chicken broth and dijon mustard. On the side, she served-up a nice mix of roasted julienned carrots, parsnips and sweet potatoes tossed with olive oil, italian seasoning, bosari salt, and garlic/pepper mix.

Right now, she's in the process of making pastry to house the moca/dark-chocolate custard she made, earlier. Gonna be eclairs for for desert and breakfast.

 

What to do With Extra Ground Meat?

Friday, we went to the Springfield farmers market and bought a 3½lb. buffalo shoulder. I trimmed it and chopped it into 1" cubes and Donna ground it up into fresh buffalo burger with the meat-grinding attachment on the KitchenAide. Last night was to be burger-night with the fresh-ground meat.

Donna baked up a batch of hamburger buns and chopped up a fresh-picked yellow onion.

I took the beef and the chopped onion, and mixed them together with some capers, the remains of a block of blue cheese and some wocestershire sauce and made up some nice, flavorful, hand-formed patties. Tossed them on the grill. I thinly sliced a couple of green zebra tomatoes Donna'd picked from the garden, that day, and topped the burgers with them and a little more blue cheese. I slathered the buns with some Löwensenf mustard and homemade ketchup and tossed on a leaf of hydroponic lettuce.

The results were rather good. However, 3½lb.of ground buffalo shoulder minus two servings of hamburger patties meant we had still had  2lbs of unused meat to sort out. So, tonight, Donna's mixing in some ground pork and making a bacon-draped meatloaf. House is already smelling pretty damned good. Still... Gotta figure out what to do with the remaining pound of meat.

Smellerous

The house ...it smells of tomatoes in the process of being turned into sauces and pastes

Savoring the Future

As I sit here, digesting a nice meal of beer-boiled grilled bratwurst, Bratkartoffeln and finished with homemade applesauce, I look forward to the coming spring. We'll be ablt to both repeat and improve upon tonight's dinner.

We'll have restocked our supply of applesauce - made from the bounty of the fall farmers' markets (mostly, from Westmooreland Farms and their awesome apples). We'll hopefully still have wintered-over potatoes from the front garden (supplemented with potatoes from the Falls Church Farmers' Market). We'll definitely have onions - both the extremely assertive ones form our garden and from the local farmers markets. We'll be able to spice it up with mushroom accents from the guy that sells the Mother Earth mushrooms (at the Falls Church market). And, we'll, hopefully, be supplementing with our own asparagus. Toss in brats from Cibola (or even the one sausage maker), and it will be another gastronomic return to Heidelberg, Germany.

I think what I'm most looking forward to is the asparagus that Donna planted, this year. Even though, at first - particularly during the hot, dry part of the early summer - out in the front bed are five, thriving asparagus crowns. It won't be quite the Heidelberg (white) Spargel experience as, at least this coming first harvesting season, it will be grüner spargel. However, it's still something to look forward to. And, as the years go by, and the asparagus becomes more hardy, we can experiment with trying to get some of it to come up white.