We wish to take this opportunity to wish hall of our readers a very happy holiday season....whatever you may be celebrating. For us at the farm, the season is all about Christmas and as we prepare gifts for friends and loved ones, we ask everyone to remember those less fortunate.
Our Christmas has always been a family celebration centered around a Christmas Eve feast of roasted goose and for well over a decade, this has included a very special chestnut cake. This cake is decadent and yet, for those concerned, gluten free. So we thought we would share the details of our recipe in this week's blog.
Ingredients:
4 pounds of fresh chestnuts
1 pound of butter (room temperature)
2 cups of sugar
8 eggs (whites and yolks separated)
4 tbsps of rum (optional)
Process:
1. Score the chestnuts with a paring knife. This will prevent the nuts from literally blowing up during the roasting phase. We do this on two sides to make them easier to peel.
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| Scoring and peeling of the chestnuts is the most time consuming part of this recipe |
2. Roast the chestnuts in a 300 deg. F oven for about 15 minutes or until the shells begin to peel away at the cuts. The chestnuts should not be overly cooked otherwise they will break up in the peeling process.
3. Peel the chestnuts. Remove as much as possible the furry skin that adheres to the nuts.
4. Grate the nuts to make a coarse chestnut meal. We use a food processor for this purpose. The aim is to get 4 cups of shredded chestnuts.
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| Peeled and grated chestnuts ready for the next step |
5. Work the butter with a mixer or a spoon in a large bowl until it is "satiny" smooth, and slowly add the sugar. Add the rum and egg yolks to the mixture then add the chestnut meal.
6. In a separate bowl whip the egg whites until they form a firm peak.
7. Slowly introduce the chestnut mix to the egg whites by gently folding the mix together. Do this in parts (basically at most a cup of chestnut mix at a time). This process will dictate the density of the cake and it is most important to keep the mix as "airy" as possible.
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| The final batter ready for the oven |
8. Prepare a spring form cake mold by buttering it and coating it with a thin layer of flour. This will prevent the cake from sticking to the mould. Since this cake is fragile, the spring form mold will allow you to easily remove the cake.
9. Cook in a 350 F. oven for about 30 minutes, or until the cake is firm. A knife inserted into the cake should come out cleanly. Once cooled, these cakes freeze very well.
10. We typically ice the cake with a dark chocolate icing (icing sugar, sugarless cocoa powder and butter). We then decorate it according as we see fit based on what we have on hand. This year we used a mocca icing and crushed almonds.
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| This year's final product...the trick now is to keep it safe from the girls! |
11. A great way to serve this cake is with a dollop of freshly whipped cream. Portions should be kept small as this is a very "heavy" dish.
Optional:
You can use the batter to make 2 thinner cakes which in turn are used to sandwich the cream and the icing is then drizzled on top.
Note:
This is a great seasonal cake since fresh chestnuts are usually available in the Fall until about Christmas. However, it is not easy to find good chestnuts in Ontario. Most are imported from Italy and as a result most are far from fresh. You will find that many nuts are dry, attacked by mould or insects.
Dry chestnuts will have the shell already separating from the nut on the store shelf. This can be seen when you squeeze the nut and detect an air pocket between the flesh and the shell.
Insect infestation can be seen on the outside of the nut by simply looking for holes.
Mould is not at all evident until the nut is peeled. It typically resembles a dusty bluish-green coating on the flesh of the nut.
Having said this, we are often disappointed with the quality of the chestnuts available. It is frustrating since they are so expensive.
This year, we had to double the weight of chestnuts used in order to get the necessary volume of chestnut meal. If you buy too many, they can always be used for stuffing (they are wonderful with goose, but will do just as well for turkey).
We're just happy to have planted our own trees this last Spring. In a few years we hope this will no longer be a problem for us.
Having prepared our cake, this week at the farm really felt like Christmas.
First one of our good neighbours and frequent visitor at the restaurant dropped by to give us a "mother". A mother is a term used for a vinegar bacterial culture. As the culture grows it tends to coagulate together into a mass with the consistency of a fragile raw liver.
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| Meet our new "mother": Sophie. |
We had always intended to make our own vinegars but to do so this culture or a starter was needed. With a mother, all you have to do is keep it fed with an alcoholic drink (a good red wine is best) and time after time you will be rewarded with a wonderful home made vinegar.
Over time, the "mother" will grow and will need to be cut down or divided.
We discovered that the origin of our mother is Bordeaux. So for some reason Chef suggested we call it Sophie (which we now do) just as he has been calling his 6 year old sour dough culture Roxanne.
Another great surprise this week was the arrival of our new wine making equipment. A 20 gallon fermenter with a degassing vacuum pump. We have a lot of work ahead to put this system together, but with renewed confidence in our wine making skills, we are ready to scale up.
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| We're getting serious: the new fermentation system |
We chose a system from Blichmann Engineering called WineEasy. We picked this system because it is scalable to 50 gallons but also because it integrates a filter which allows for the easy and clean separation of the fruits from the wine (our current process can be very messy).
To conclude our week, we also took delivery of new pieces for our gallery's art glass collection. This included a large and rare Emile Galle vase from the turn of the last century.
We will close this week with the results of the ice storm most of us have lived through in Southern Ontario over the past 24 hours. Overnight we had many power failures but more concerning were the sounds during the night. We woke up to many damaged trees and had to quickly assess the state of the property.
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| A welcomed addition to the gallery: a rare Galle cameo vase |
We will close this week with the results of the ice storm most of us have lived through in Southern Ontario over the past 24 hours. Overnight we had many power failures but more concerning were the sounds during the night. We woke up to many damaged trees and had to quickly assess the state of the property.
Our greatest concerns were the Kiwi trellises. Luckily these held up very well.
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| Luckily, our new Kiwi trellises held up ti the ice storm |
This was not the case for an old willow which was uprooted and is now blocking our trail.
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| An old uprooted Willow is now blocking our trail |
This was also not the case for quite a few trees around the manor. One of our last remaining old pines on the back ridge lost many branches and we may now have to remove the tree.
A Juniper and an old Birch also suffered badly with many broken branches. While our treasured old Yew has been literally flattened. Hopefully it will come back to life.
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| An old tall Yew was completely "flattened" |
Luckily our prized European Copper Beech is in good shape. The branches however flexed so low to the ground, our cars were boxed in under the tree.
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| Boxed in by the drooping branches of the Copper Beech |
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