Roasting Chestnuts By The Fire

I love the smell of roasting chestnuts... after 7 years in Geneva, where there are vendors roasting and selling them every few blocks, that's the smell that means fall is here. So when the little chick and I were out for a walk earlier this week and I saw some chestnut trees that had been shedding the nuts, I picked up a bunch and decided to give it a go. It would be fun, something interesting for the little chick to do, and, fill my house with that wonderful smell.

I thought about looking online for some recipes, but then I realized: they're nuts. You just roast them. How hard could it be?

Well, it turns out it's a little more complicated than I had guessed. I will be happy to share the recipe to success when I get it, but, in the meantime, I can tell you this:

1. 160° C seems to be a little high. Maybe really, really, high.
2. If you just put them in the oven like you find them, they'll explode.

Thankfully the little chick and I were out of the room when they started to pop, and she never connected the sounds coming from the kitchen with the chestnuts we had put into the oven. She was a bit disappointed when she found out that we wouldn't be able to eat them after all, and, with the kind of tact only a two year-old can muster, remarked as I was pulling the ones that remained on the baking tray out of the oven that there was a bit of a mess.

Yes, ma'am.

The MNB was over tonight, as usual, to practice, and I mentioned this to them. They seemed to kind it pretty amusing, but really - have you ever seen any other roasted nuts that all have the shells split? I just assumed it happened as part of the roasting process, and that, like mussels, that was probably how you could tell they were done.

Not exactly, as it turns out.

So we'll have another go at it. Next time I'm reading up, there will be no explosions in the kitchen, and everything will turn out beautifully.

If I had a quarter for every time I said that...