Notice: Ugly picture below
This is another story of a failure turned into a success. I am starting to think that I this could be my speciality.
As some of you have probably noticed by reading my previous posts, I sometimes mingle with French food bloggers. They are a fun bunch and have some very interesting events such as Blog Appétit. During the last weeks however I noticed that a great number of these guys and gals made their own 'marrons glacés' (glazed chestnuts) in preparation for the holidays. I had seen boxes of these in some fancy grocery stores but since they were quite expensive I never tried them. Since I was curious and that I thought they could make wonderful gifts for Christmas, I decided to attempt making some by myself. While I don’t want to divulge the result of my experiment yet, let’s just say that in the process I broke a great number of these delicious nuts while cooking them; they can be really fragile.
Since I could not use little pieces of chestnuts to make my 'marrons glacés', I re-cooked them in a light syrup and pureed them in a food processor. This produced a nice purée which I could use in many recipes. Yesterday however, I made some simple chestnut soufflés. They were good but not sweet enough to my taste. I am thinking about incorporating some caster sugar to the egg whites before folding them into the purée next time. With a bit of luck, it might add some texture and even some structure to this soufflé. I like my sweet soufflés to have that hardish texture in the mouth before slowly melting and vanishing. I'm not much of a baker, so it may takes some time before I'll be able to get exactly what I want. In the meantime I still enjoy them; these are not bad little deserts at all. They just not perfectly adjusted to my taste yet.
And by the way, sorry for the ugly picture... that was the best of the lot believe it or not!
2 comments:
Damn...your blog makes me salivate....nice photos. Speaking of Cuisine basse...why not expose to the world, and experiment with, Quebec's greatest contribution to world cuisine?
[ie Poutine]
Off to the fridge, VL
Recently, Sarah Lou of One whole Clove produced a few interesting articles on Quebec food including baked beans, Fudge, Ragout de patte and, of course Poutine.
As for myself, as I am heading back to Quebec City for Chirstmas, I will certainly end up eating poutine after drinking too much beer. As far as I remember, I never cooked poutine... its cheap and readily available almost everywhere... and lets admit it, it is not the healthiest snack!
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