[london.food] Garlic and chestnut soup

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From: Kate L Pugh
Subject: [london.food] Garlic and chestnut soup
Date: 01:16 on 27 Dec 2003
Chestnuts left over from Christmas, eek, what shall I do with them.
There were two and a half bulbs of garlic too - can't remember which
dish I bought them for, but they were definitely implicated in
Christmas somewhere.  These needed using up.  (Garlic bulbs don't get
used in this house.  When I'm not here they live on takeaway.)  Also
some single cream that I bought because I like it on Christmas pud.

Garlic soup, of course.  And chestnuts, and some of the rice left over
from tonight's stirfry to thicken it, and some of the cream to finish it.

The obvious way to bring out the flavour of an ingredient as strongly
as possible is to use it in more than one way.  I melted margarine
(they don't keep butter here either) and cooked some chopped garlic
quite gently for a little while, adding half the chestnuts, chopped,
after a bit, and left it going until the garlic was fragrant but not
browned - about 20 minutes all together.  Then I added some more
thinly-sliced garlic and gave it just a minute or so before pouring in
some water and adding all the rest of the garlic - peeled but whole -
and the rest of the chestnuts.

I would have used real chicken stock instead of water but that all
went in the other soup I already posted about, so I popped in a
chicken stock cube.  (A vegetable OXO would not have worked.  Some of
the light-coloured Swiss vegetable bouillon would, though.)

Simmered it for an hour or two.  Pureed it and realised that it was
already quite perfect and the cream would not have added to it.  Very
very tasty.

Dunno what to do with the cream though now.

Kake

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