Chocolate Chestnut Pie

[connie]

This is one of those non-exact recipes with only a roughly guide for quantities. It does not need to really be anything else.

You want some shortcrust pastry. I would suggest a sweet shortcrust pastry because the pie itself is a sweet one.
Or you could make your own. This is as good as any. http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8079/basic-sweet-pastry

Grease and line your tin/pie dish of choice and cook the sweet shortcrust pastry blind for 10 minutes and uncovered until it starts to brown.

Then you want some cooked sweet chestnuts. About 8 oz I think will do. You want them cooked to make life easier, but you could cook them yourself in milk to make the pie creamier. However, take the cooked sweet chestnuts and add enough milk to them whilst blending to make a thick paste. You want to also add enough caster sugar (fine sugar) to sweeten to taste.

Finally you want to add a good sized bar of melted dark chocolate to the chestnut puree. Mix well and check the sweetness. You can't change it later!

Now pour the mixture into the pastry crust either to fill the case or until you run out of puree... either works just fine.
Now put into the fridge and allow to cool. It will take 3-4 hours to set fully.

Now if you have a dairy free sweet shortcrust pastry, have used a decent dark chocolate and used a dairy free milk, you will have a wonderful dairy free chocolate chestnut pie. Mine gets served with soya cream.

 

[Trellum]

I'm so going to bookmark this so I can try it and hopefully add it to my repertoire of pie recipes It sounds delicious, do you thing it would be the same is I used hazelnuts instead?

 

[connie]

Not instead of the sweet chestnuts, no. Sweet Chestnuts have a very low oil content and are also very good for you in that sense. They are a completely different texture and the closest thing I can equate the to in puree form is probably a pumpkin. They are totally different to all nuts in that aspect.

Now pumpkin and chocolate... that could work really well.
Sweet chestnuts can be purchased in the UK in the freezer section of a supermarket all year round, but only fresh just before Christmas and they are very expensive. £3.99 for around 250g which is not much. I harvested around 20kg wild last year without trying.

I'm guessing they don't grow where you live? Either sweet potato and pumpkin or just pumpkin would give you the same texture and potentially taste as well. They have a very mild taste.

 

[connie]

Thinking about it, soaked Cashew nuts might work as a replacement - that would have a similar taste and texture. I might have to try that one out when my next batch of cashew nuts arrives, though at £35 for 5kg it won't be a cheap trial compared to the £0 for 20kg of sweet chestnuts. I think I have around 10kg left in my freezer...

 

[Trellum]

Oh jammer! Do you think the unsalted cashews from the action would do? If not, I might be able to find them Not sure if I can find them in Amsterdam, but odds are I can, need to look for them. I really want to try that pie!

 

[DancingLady]

I'm unfamiliar with chestnuts, except that they are part of a Christmas song. Would you compare the flavor of chestnut to any other nut or are they totally unique?

 

[connie]

OK - I have had to look this up for people. In the UK we know the tree as the Sweet Chestnut. There is a faint sweet taste to the wild sweet chestnuts here in the UK, but the shop bought ones from southern Europe have a sweeter taste, though there is nothing sweet about the nut. It is also not very good at being a nut either. Information about the nut states

Unlike most commercial nuts which contain relatively large amounts of protein, sweet chestnuts consist of up to 70% starch, between 2 and 5 % fat and only 2 to 4 % protein.

It seems that it is also known as the Spanish Chestnut or European Chestnut, with its Latin name of Castanea sativa. It must not be confused with the Horse Chestnut which is poisonous, hence why it is always called the Sweet Chestnut and never a chestnut. It is not difficult to know the difference once you have seen the two. I am really approaching its northern limit here in where I am, so I am very lucky with a series of trees I have here that produce viable nuts.

The Woodland Trust website is quite interesting on the tree. http://www.ancient-tree-hunt.org.uk/morestuff/The+Sweet+Chestnut
Food uses come at the bottom of the site, but it is well known across Europe but best known it seems, to countries around the Mediterranean where the weather is warmer! It is native to southern Europe, western Asia and north Africa.

It is also the same nut that the French use for Maroon Glace.

@DancingLady There is nothing that they compare to. They are a very dry, floury nut. In fact they hardly qualify as a nut in the typical sense. They are soft, dry, floury, slightly sweet and unique. The best alternative I can think of is soaked cashew nuts.

 

[DancingLady]

Interesting, I have never seen a nut that didn't have a lot of oil in it. I have been curious about the chestnut for some time so perhaps I will buy a small amount if I see them just to try and see if I like the flavor before I make a large dish with them.