Risotto con pancetta e castagne/Maccheroni con pancetta e...

Risotto con pancetta e castagne

At Thanksgiving, we were going to be alone and so producing a full-blown traditional meal for the holiday seemed absurd, seeing as there would be just the three of us. So then, I got to thinking about making instead a partially Thanksgiving-related but spiritually Italian meal that would celebrate seasonal products. Originally, I had planned to make a risotto with chestnuts -- not a traditional dish but one of my own devise -- as the primo but in the end, I changed my mind and made something else about which I hope to post soon. The risotto with chestnuts was put off for the following week and here is what I made.
I started with a handful of roasted chestnuts...

... which we peeled and finished cooking by boiling, reserving the cooking liquid for the making of the risotto. In the pan in which the risotto was to be made, I browned and crisped some cubes of pancetta...

The main cooking liquid for the risotto was to be some chicken stock we had on hand, to which I added a pinch of saffron and some of the cooking liquid from the chestnuts...

The soffritto was composed of chopped leek with some rosemary in olive oil...

In honour of my friend, JeffB, I added the rice in cruciform fashion and...

... proceeded to cook the rice in the usual manner, first toasting it...

... and then gradually cooking it with the repeated introduction of small amounts of the broth/chestnut water...

When the rice was ready, I added the crisp pancetta bits and the chestnuts, which I then smashed a bit with a fork against the back of a wooden spoon...

For the mantecato, I used a nice dose of parmesan cheese but then, in place of butter, I used a healthy shot of olio nuovo, which was part of my original idea of the dish for Thanksgiving, in the spirit of celebrating the harvest...

Particularly satisfying in this dish was the contrast of the flavour of the pancetta and the sweetness of the bits of chestnut. We all really enjoyed this risotto con pancetta e castagne a lot.


Bon prô,
Antonius

Links to other recipes and cooking notes by this writer: http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=55649#55649

Bravo Antonious - a remarkably simple yet creative use of one of my favorite fall treats - gesztenye (Magyar) or كستناء, transliterated kastena' (Arabic).

If I'm not mistaken, the use of pancetta and castagne is not at all untraditional. You probably know more about this than I do, but I seem to recall that fried pancetta is often paired with a polenta of castagne flour.

I need to go out and get some chestnuts/castagne/gesztenye/kastena' asap.

The dish indeed looks fantastic, and gives me another opportunity to plug freeze-dried and oven-roasted chestnut chips, which I find easier and tastier than their fresh counterparts. My most common use for them is as breakfast cereal with a little fruit and milk, but more in the spirit of this thread, I have also used them in place of pine nuts in pasta dishes. Recently - spaghetti alla chitarra with butter, chopped sage, parmigiano reggiano, and a sprinkling of chopped chestnut chips. Fantastic.

Kenny,

I buy packaged, peeled chestnuts whenever I get a chance at random E. European/Asian/Whatever markets. They taste awesome and are a great sub for fresh ones.

But I've never seen the kinds you mention. Where do you get em?

Habibi wrote:Kenny,

I buy packaged, peeled chestnuts whenever I get a chance at random E. European/Asian/Whatever markets. They taste awesome and are a great sub for fresh ones.

But I've never seen the kinds you mention. Where do you get em?

Hillside Orchards Oven Dried Chestnut Chips:

I buy these direct from the source at the Green City Market. Freeze-dried chestnut chips are available in addition to the pictured oven-dried variety. The oven-dried taste better eaten out of hand, the freeze-dried perhaps a little better reconstituted and pureed.

!يا حبيبنا، شكرا جزيلا، صديقي

Pancetta and chestnuts co-appear in some traditional recipes, to be sure... I believe there is a Tuscan risotto with both, but I think my dish is a little busier than most traditional savory dishes (of rice or pasta) with chestnuts. The use of stock here, in place of just the cooking water, is a bit out of line with most traditional dishes I know (though milk is used in some recipes) and, of course, the mantecato with olive oil is a bit out of the ordinary. But I do think the dish is still pretty simple, with a nice focus on the contrast between the pancetta and chestnuts. But as I said above, I was not even thinking about making a traditional Italian chestnut dish, which tend to be austere; rather, I was trying to make something festive for (originally) the Thanksgiving table and with that, I wanted to be sure to make something that my 9 year old son would like. As things turned out, he loved this dish.

As I mentioned, I did not in the end make this on Thanksgiving, as I decided to do something a bit different for the primo that day, about which I will post (inshallah). But given how things turned out and how the dish was received by the familial audience, I might well make it on Thanksgiving next year.

A

Kennyz -- Thanks for the kind words! And also thanks for calling to my attention the chestnut chips -- I look forward to trying them.

If one cooks (roasts/boils) chestnuts now, one can freeze them them and keep them on hand for a while. Typcially, they're not available here in Chicago all that widely and the prices in some places are rather beastly - I get them in Mexican shops for about $3 per pound, $3-4 less than chez les marchés aux gringueaux...

A

A bit belated but nonetheless heartfelt "welcome back" to Antonius. I've missed your contributions for a long time and the recent spate has been a reason, indeed, for giving thanks this season. As always, a wonderful post and the initial pic whetted my appetite (okay, okay, so I was drooling....). Even better, the posts always have enough meat to them (no pun intended) to prompt some serious thought about their provenance, creation, and even about cooking in general. When (and if) I retire, I think I will devote my leisure to reproducing the recipes posted by Antonius and Bridgestone. What better way to spend one's days? (If only it could be done somewhere such as say...Roma.... )

Again, many thanks, Antonius.

Gypsy Boy -

You're welcome and many thanks to you for reading the post and commenting as you did. I'm delighted you enjoyed it! I'm also very happy to hear you like the style -- I don't spell things out completely, which in a way assumes the reader is familiar with basic methods but also recognises that much of the fun of cooking is thinking things through, experimenting and figuring new things out and rethinking old things.

As they say in NIce: L'aiga que resta sente qu'empesta -- 'l'eau stagnante empeste'.

A

Maccheroni con pancetta e castagne

Ah, chestnuts, they're so delicious... that risotto con pancetta e castagne, veramente buono buono...

... but now, how 'bout some maccheroni con pancetta e castagne...

Very similar process, starting with roasting some chestnuts...

... then peeling them and cooking them in water...

... some onion and sage and pancetta...

... the pancetta browned...

... then, set the pancetta aside and make the soffritto of the onion and sage in the rendered fat with some olive oil...

...when the pasta is in the pot cooking, add the chestnuts to the onions...

... drain the pasta half-cooked and finish it in the pan with the soffritto, using some of cooking water from the chestnuts to finish cooking the pasta...

... add some black pepper...

...and finish up with the maccheroni still al dente...

... the final product, al dente pasta with a nicely creamy condiment..

... e po' nu poc' 'e caso e nu poc' 'e ricotta ncopp'...

... Secondo Lucantonius, ottimo questo piatto, e secondo me, lui ha sempre ragione...

... veramente...

Bon prô,
Antonius

Links to other recipes and cooking notes by this writer: viewtopic.php?p=55649#55649

Antonius wrote:... add some black paper... [ ]

I was with you all the way to this step. Jeez! You've got to start using more readily obtainable ingredients! I know, I just KNOW, that this is not going to be any ordinary black paper that we have around the house. I'm gonna have to make a special trip to some tiny store three hours away just to get the RIGHT black paper.

And then. Then. Tell me. PLEASE tell me how you got the paper that small.

And then. Then. Tell me. PLEASE tell me how you got the paper that small.

I do most everything in the traditional way. In this case, with a very sharp knife.



Comme se dixe into mæ paise, a ciù cattïa a spellâ a l'é a cöa... ma o papê neigro o l'é cattïo ascì a spellâ...
... o mi voeiva dî 'o peivie neigro'?...

A

Antonius wrote:I do most everything in the traditional way. In this case, with a very sharp knife.

Why you, you, you...TRADITIONALIST!