It smells like fall. I always catch the scent of wood smoke from someones, if not my chimney. I wake up in the morning and there is frost at the edge of the forest and down in the valleys. When I take my dog, J Edgar for a walk, a few times each day, I end up in the forest. Up till the first frost, I always had a plastic bag with me and never failed to come home without a few chantrelles or pied de mouton mushrooms. Of course there was the incredible bounty of cepes this year, a once in a lifetime season, I was finding cepes as big as my head!
Now it is the time of chestnuts, chataigne in French, or the larger variety, marron. I can't really tell the difference between a chataigne and a marron. They litter the floor of the forest, popping out of their spiny cases. They are a part of the cuisine of poor people all over Europe. Of course like the soul food of America, great things are born of neccessity. The chestnuts were used for everything. Dried and ground, they became flour. Today, the tradition of Chestnut bread is kept alive in the artisanal boulangeries in the villages. I remember growing up in Detroit being able to buy bags of roasted chestnuts from a vendor by the main library on Woodward. He had the traditional copper chestnut roaster in a wagon and it whistled. That's a fall type memory, a bag of warm roasted chestnuts to keep your hands warm.
We have a few ancient chestnut roasters to put in the fireplace with long wooden handles. In the Dordogne, there is a three legged cast iron pot made that sits in the fire place for chestnuts. You roast them and then with the aid of two long notched wooden sticks that are pinned together, you can shell them in the pot.
Once you acquire a taste for them, the mealy texture and sweet nuttiness, fall is never complete without them.
A very special treat in the fall and winter are Marrons glace, candied chestnuts boiled in sugar syrup. You can buy them in fancy boxes. The chestnuts can be boiled and mashed with butter and seasoned to be served as a puree with game or roasted with in the oven with meat and served on the side.
One of my favorite chestnut products is Creme de Marron. It is marrons pureed with sugar and vanilla. It is sold in cans and jars and even squeeze tubes. Horribly addictive! One of the regular bistro desserts is a concoction called a Mont Blanc, which is simply Fromage Blanc and Creme de Marron together in a dessert dish. So simple but so sinfully good! I know you can get Creme de Marron in America, I've found it in some pretty unlikely places, but it's worth looking for. Fromage Blanc is as far as I can tell available in the USA as something called Quark. It's like Yoghurt, but not fermented the same way and really more like creamy sweet farmers cheese. Here, it is a staple.
One of my favorite things to do with Creme de Marron is to make a creme, like a custard. We make the creme, then put a tablespoon of creme de marron in the bottom of each ramekin, pour in the creme and then put the ramekins in a bath of water and cook them in the oven.
The creme recipe I am going to give you is actually the perfect recipe for a creme brulee....You make the little ramekins of custard and when they are cool, right before serving, I put a light coating of sugar on top, the use my blowtorch carmelize the sugar. It hardens immediately over the creme and you have to break the carmel topping when you eat it. When we do the creme with the marron filling, I don't do the caramel topping.
This actually is very simple. You need 6 flat earthen ware ramekins...if you know how creme brulee is served, then that is the size you need.
Creme Brulee
6 egg yolks
75 cl of cream (in America, I would use half and half)
60 grams of sugar
mix the ingredients together and if you are going to do a straight creme brulee, fill the ramekins, but not all the way to the top!
If you are going to do a Creme Brulee au chataigne, put a soupspoon of the Creme de Marron in the bottom of each ramekin and then ladle in the custard mixture.
Have a wide shallow baking dish ready with some water in it and put the ramekins in it, then put the baking dish into a 250 farenheit oven for about an hour. The pots of creme should just begin to color when it's done. You can always use the toothpick trick...stick a tooth pick into the creme and if iit comes out clean, it should be done!
Let it cool before you eat it, we have found that it's better after it has set for a day in the fridge!
Bon Apetite!
2 comments:
Hello Patrick,
Your posting makes me want to take time and walk through my 20 acres of fall foliage here. I am going to take off on Tuesday, vote, then take the rest of the day for myself to count my blessings and enjoy what I have. We both have been working too hard here of late. The tri-state area here (Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia) has had a record number of absentee ballots sent out to voters. I am interested on the outcome of tomorrow night’s reports will be coming in.
I remember my father telling me when he was a kid and how some of the old timers would roast the chestnuts that they gathered in the woods of West Virginia. However, in the 1930’s, a blight went through and killed all of the chestnut trees. It came from an imported Chinese chestnut tree, which is immune to the disease. It is my understanding that the blight has embedded itself into the DNA of the chestnuts and the tree will die before it gets 7 years old. There is a research facility in West Virginia that it looking into removing the deformity in the DNA and would like to try to reintroduce the chestnut tree back into the wild.
There is another type of chestnut called a “horse chestnut” or “buckeye.” (An old Ohio boy should know about this one.) It will have three nuts per spiky pod but I have been told that you should not eat them.
An odd thought just came to me. You talking about harvesting mushrooms, chestnuts, etc. from the woods to eat, made me remember Yule Gibbons who use to advertise “Grape Nut” cereal. He wrote a book on how to live in the woods eating what the forest would supply. Should make you feel kind of earthy or as Martha Stewart would say, “It’s a good thing.” Thanks for reminding us to take the time to notice the beauty around us.
Hi, do you happen to remember any stores in NYC that sell Creme de Marron. I haven't had any luck finding it. Jacques Pepin recently mentioned it in a radio spot he did on NPR. All he said was that he got it somewhere in Old Saybrook, CT, which is a bit out of my way, but I might just end up wandering the streets there looking for it. If you know of any places that do sell it, could you please e-mail me at pmonin80 at yahoo? I would be most appreciative. Thanks
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