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Italian Chestnut Pudding
Boil a pound of the large Italian chestnuts; peel them and put them through a vegetable press. Moisten them with two tablespoonfuls of sherry; heap them in a shallow dish and surround or cover them with whipped cream.
Garnish with a circle of whole chestnuts boiled and peeled.
A three-ingredient dessert that lives or dies on the chestnuts. The original assumes you can buy them fresh in the shell in autumn and that you know how to get them out of it.
- Peel them hotThe papery inner skin only comes away while the nut is steaming; once it cools it welds itself to the flesh. Score an X through the shell of each nut before boiling, then lift them from the water a few at a time and peel with a cloth in hand, leaving the rest in the hot water.
- A pound of chestnutsAbout 450 g in the shell yields roughly 12 oz of peeled nut, which is two generous servings or four modest ones. Boil 25-35 minutes, until a nut crushes easily between finger and thumb.
- Vegetable pressThis is a ricer or a food mill, not a blender. The point is long loose threads of chestnut that hold air; a processor turns them into paste and the dish collapses into a dense mound.
- SubstitutingVacuum-packed or jarred cooked chestnuts work and are already peeled. Use about 12 oz, warmed briefly so they pass through the ricer without crumbling. Avoid sweetened marrons glaces, which will overwhelm the cream.
- SweeteningThe recipe adds none, and boiled chestnuts are only faintly sweet. Sweetening the whipped cream instead is one option; a tablespoon or two of sugar and a little vanilla in the cream is in keeping. If you want the chestnut itself sweet, work in sugar with the sherry before ricing.
- The sherryTwo tablespoonfuls into 12 oz of dry riced chestnut is a moistening, not a soaking. Add it a spoonful at a time and stop when the threads just hold together; rum or brandy is a common alternative.
- AssemblingRice the chestnut directly into the serving dish and do not pat or smooth it. Spoon the whipped cream over or around it at the last moment, since the chestnut dries and the cream weeps if it stands.
This closely resembles the dish Italians call Monte Bianco and the French Mont Blanc a "mountain" of riced sweet chestnut heaped up and covered in whipped cream to stand for snow on the peak. Both countries claim it, and the name is generally traced to the mountain on their shared border rather than to any one cook. The large sweet cultivars sold as "Italian chestnuts" were an autumn import, distinct from the smaller native American chestnut then still common in eastern forests but later all but wiped out by blight. The technique is worth noting for what it lacks any sweetening, any binding, any cooking after the boil. It is a dessert built entirely on the texture of a pressed ingredient, which is why the ricer matters more than anything else in it.