This chestnut soup recipe is drawn from a volume entitled Il Cuoco Piemontese, which was published in 1766. Though it was one of the first books written in Italian to present French recipes, given the importance of chestnuts in the Italian diet, especially among the poor, this recipe is likely Piemontese. The days of abstinence referred to in the title are the days that the Catholic Church forbade the consumption of meat, in other words Fridays, Vigils, and Lent. The recipe:
Ingredients:
- 3 onions
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- A carrot
- A stick of celery
- 3 leeks
- 1-2 clove garlic
- 2 cloves
- 100 chestnuts, peeled (you could use dried chestnuts, soaked overnight)
Preparation:
To make chestnut soup for a day of abstinence, slice three onions and put them in a pot with a walnut-sized piece of unsalted butter. Mince a carrot, a stick of celery, the white parts of three leeks, and a half a clove of garlic, and add them to the pot too, together with two cloves. Sauté the mixture until the onion is slightly browned, then add water to cover by a few inches and continue cooking everything for an hour. Strain the liquid and salt it lightly.
Take about a hundred chestnuts, peel away the outer skins, and then heat them over a brisk flame in a skillet with holes punched through it (a popcorn popper will also work) until you can rub off the inner skins of the chestnuts. After cleaning them, simmer them until soft in some of the broth. Select the prettiest ones to keep whole, and blend the others. You will obtain a pale cream; dilute it with the broth the chestnuts cooked input the others through a strainer. Dilute the mixture further with the remaining vegetable broth to obtain a soup of the consistency you prefer, add the whole chestnuts, and serve.
You can, if you prefer, dilute your chestnut paste in meat broth, at which point the soup is no longer for days of abstinence.
Yield: 8-12 servings chestnut soup.
Take about a hundred chestnuts, peel away the outer skins, and then heat them over a brisk flame in a skillet with holes punched through it (a popcorn popper will also work) until you can rub off the inner skins of the chestnuts. After cleaning them, simmer them until soft in some of the broth. Select the prettiest ones to keep whole, and blend the others. You will obtain a pale cream; dilute it with the broth the chestnuts cooked input the others through a strainer. Dilute the mixture further with the remaining vegetable broth to obtain a soup of the consistency you prefer, add the whole chestnuts, and serve.
You can, if you prefer, dilute your chestnut paste in meat broth, at which point the soup is no longer for days of abstinence.
Yield: 8-12 servings chestnut soup.
