Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...
10:03 AM Thu, Jan 08, 2009 | Permalink
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Sooner or later, every kid who hears The Christmas Song wants to try "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." I had bought a handful before Christmas, but only last night did we get around to roasting them in the living room fireplace. Fortunately, we looked up how to do it on the Web. (Before this sensible thought prevailed, someone had wrapped them whole in foil, ready to thrust into the fire. They would have exploded.) Lavish photos at Kathy Meister's StartCooking blog (How to Roast Chestnuts) showed us how deep an X to cut in the shell to let the steam escape. The 11-year-old had grabbed the fireplace shovel as a roasting pan, and he was dispatched to wash it after we saw that Cherry's English Kitchen (You Really Can Roast Chestnuts On An Open Fire) had used a similar shovel to roast her chestnuts. This was good news, since I didn't want to be scrubbing carbon off the bottom of any of my frying pans. Armed with a sturdy oven mitt to keep the handle from becoming unmanageably hot, the kid took over the roasting.
The kid: "I liked them better uncooked." Oops, he'd been nibbling one at the "cut the X" stage. And, due to high levels of tannic acid, raw chestnuts are indigestible. |
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