Chestnut-Clementine Soupand Chard-Red Potato Salad
I was going to make chestnut jam, yet in the process ended up with soup. It was an unexpected delight. (Just for the record: it wasn't a misstep that happened. I know roasted chestnuts aren't fruits or berries, yet I treated them like they were and added a little lemon juice for pectin and peeled clementine segments for juice and pureed them together in the blender, adding milk and heavy cream and water for liquefaction. I buttered a saucepan under low heat and stirred in constantly the mixture for 20 minutes or so - yet it's not thickening. I added cornstarch - and this ingredient changed the game altogether.)
Adding rock salt and vegetable stock and stirring, stirring made my jam chowdery, and I tasted and it was good, had a rawness to it yet balance that coated well. She will be a soup, I declared. (Remarkably the chestnuts and clementines married well, almost like tasting a prosciutto with cantaloupe hors d'oeuvre that you don't finish off with wine.) But some elemental flavor was missing to crown a "garland of love" to the two: sage. So what I did was, as soon as the soup was cooked, before turning the stove off and serving, I took a sprig of sage and used it to stir the soup as to "tie" the chestnut and the clementine together as one with the birds and the bees - and anointed the couple with virgin oil.
Speaking of birds and bees, why not invite chard and red potato over to the bounty - it's a Mediterranean autumn wedding after all!
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