Chestnut Roast

Posted on 19 October 2011

I recently found out that a vegetarian friend of mine had never heard of chestnut roast! Although I am a massive carnivore now, I was in fact a vegetarian for five years, and during this time I discovered that chestnut roast is possibly the best vegetarian dish there is. I mentioned it in passing to my fiancée, who immediately suggested that I could cook it for her. I should learn to keep my damn mouth shut.

ingredients

• 240g chestnuts, in one of those weird vacuum-sealed tins
• 150g cashews
• 4 closed cup mushrooms
• 120g goat’s cheese
• sage
• tarragon
• parsley
• 2 slices granary bread, turned into crumbs
• small amount of veg stock
• 2 onions
• knob of butter

Method

Heat the butter in a frying pan, then chop and fry the onions. After a while, chop and add the mushrooms.

Meanwhile, chop/bash/whizz the cashews. Add the chestnuts and whizz or mash.

When the onions and mushrooms are done, add to the nut mix and stir well. Add the goat’s cheese, veg stock, chopped parsley, sage and tarragon, and breadcrumbs.

Roast in a pre-heated oven at 200 °C for an hour.

Serve with potatoes and veg. We had mash and peas.

Results

Delicious.

I think next time I’d ditch the tarragon, as it tends to overpower the rest of the flavours. Also, I think I have too many things competing with the chestnuts — the mushrooms and breadcrumbs are probably diluting the flavour too much. This is a delicious meal, and one I had for christmas dinner when I was a vegetarian. It takes a fair amount of prep work and a long cooking time, so it’s not going to become a normal after-work evening meal for me, but I’ll keep it in my repertoire for special occasions.