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Mont Blanc
1 pound large chestnuts (Italian chestnuts are best for this) 1/2 teaspoon salt 3/4 cup sugar Whipped cream Put the chestnuts into the oven for a moment, until the shell and inner skin can be easily removed. Boil the skinned chestnuts in water with the salt and three tablespoons of the sugar, until they are very tender. Add one-half cup sugar to the water and chestnuts and let stand until thoroughly cold. Remove chestnuts from this sirup and run them through a potato-ricer on to a platter, mounding it high. Save a few of the finest whole pieces to decorate the dish. Top it all with a spoonful of sweetened whipped cream, and put a border of whipped cream around the edge of the dish, dotting it with the whole nuts here and there.
A dessert of two elements: sweetened chestnut purée pushed into threads, and whipped cream. Nearly all the work is in getting the chestnuts clean and cooked soft enough to rice without effort.
- Peeling the chestnutsCut an X through the shell of each nut before heating, or they can burst. A short spell in a hot oven loosens shell and inner pellicle; the recipe specifies only "a moment" and gives no temperature. Peel them while still hot, since the skin clings once they cool. A pound in the shell yields roughly 3/4 pound of nutmeat.
- Italian chestnutsThe recipe means large sweet European chestnuts, sold now as marrons or simply Italian chestnuts. Do not substitute water chestnuts or horse chestnuts. Vacuum-packed peeled cooked chestnuts, about 12 oz, work and skip the peeling entirely.
- Cook them very softThis is the hinge. Chestnuts that are merely tender will clog a ricer and come out in lumps rather than threads. Simmer 30 to 45 minutes, until a nut crushes with no resistance against the side of the pan.
- The sugarThree tablespoons go into the cooking water and half a cup into the syrup afterward, which leaves a spoonful or so of the 3/4 cup for sweetening the cream. Sweeten the cream to taste rather than measuring.
- Cold before ricingStanding in the syrup until thoroughly cold does two things: it sweetens the nuts through, and it firms them so the strands hold their shape. Warm chestnut purée slumps into a paste.
- Ricing and moundingLet the strands fall where they land and do not pat or smooth the mound; the loose, tangled texture is the whole point of the dish. A potato ricer with the coarse plate, or a food mill, gives the right thread.
- Timing and yieldServes four to six. Assemble within an hour of serving, as riced chestnut dries and stiffens on the surface if it stands uncovered.
- The syrupThe drained syrup is worth keeping. It is a chestnut-flavored simple syrup, good over ice cream or stirred into coffee.