Castanas / Roasted Chestnuts
“Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…” is one of my all-time favorite lines in a Christmas carol or any song for that matter. 
As the Christmas season draws near, I play that classic and it never fails to put me in the mood. I have roasted chestnuts on an open fire several times and it isn’t as romantic as it sounds! There is actually a specialized contraption that is used to enclose the chestnuts while you put them over the flames in your fireplace. Why, you may wonder… it’s because the bloody nuts heat up and often explode like firecrackers if they are not restrained! Nevertheless, the whole process screams “holidays are here” so I don’t mind the potential hot and fast trajectory of a wayward chestnut…
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present for this Christmas and I wanted to use them before the holidays were over… While our Christmas dinners are usually a more predictable red, green or white theme, I wanted to see if we had enough stuff around to pull off a “blue table.” The plates are chargers or buffet size and have a medium blue outer band and a gold rim. They were manufactured by Robert Haviland & C. Parlon in Limoges, France and the pattern is known as “Bleu monet.” They go nicely with the plain Limoges white plates I normally use for proper dinners…
lenguas de gato (tongues of cats) which must have gotten their name simply because they were flat and small… I can’t imagine that a cat’s tongue would be crisp, sweet and buttery… at any rate, I have decided to declare war on egg whites…if there is one ingredient that has succeeded in irritating me this season, it’s the egg white. First, local eggs have too much of it so unless the recipe measures volume, then your proportions can be royally screwed. Second, for some reason, local egg whites seem far more watery than good egg whites, unless you buy the organic eggs at a whopping PHP8 each. Third, as much as I like their glue like capability (they were once mixed with mortar for construction, were they not?), they use it to stick to pans and make it nearly impossible to take a meringue or cookie off the pan without two expletives used per 10 second period… So the war is on despite my doing 2-3 other high egg white recipes that will be posted later…egg whites will return to their main use in our kitchen, to make icing for the annual gingerbread house…
attempt to post as many pre-Christmas items as I could. It’s the writing where I have a bottleneck so while I have photos and recipes galore, I just can’t seem to find enough time to sit down and write. One of the nagging issues I had as I made ensaimada after ensaimada with a 30+ egg yolk recipe each time was what to do with all of the egg whites! So today is egg white day; first, the sans rival post earlier and now Paciencia…a great, relatively easy user-upper of excess egg whites. To make, beat 8 egg whites until stiff with the whisk attachment on your mixer. Add 2 cups of caster (or white) sugar and continue to beat until glossy. Sift 1 cup all purpose flour and ½ teaspoon of baking powder together and fold this into the egg whites carefully. Add some grated rind of lemon or some lemon/vanilla extract.
It is without rival one of the most pain in the rear desserts to make properly, in my silly opinion. Getting nostalgic close to Christmas, I figured I would attempt another of my mom’s favorite desserts (although she never made it herself). How hard could it be? Layers of meringue with nuts and a sickly sweet, buttery and rich filling… It sounded simple enough. Well, first of all let’s start with the meringue. I have never been a master of baked egg whites so my first mistake was to make the meringue too thick and thus would not cook through. Second, it just sticks to the bloody pan no matter how much you grease it. I tried silpat silicone mats, foil, parchment paper, oil and it still was an incredible mess. Really annoying. At any rate, I managed to make about 4 layers worth and after much angst getting this ready we (a friend and I) spent agonizing minutes trying to extract the layers without breaking. Worse, if its really humid, it affects the meringue.
what’s with all the leches lately? Heeheehee. I have received several emails asking where I get lechon and while I hate to disappoint as I don’t really eat that much lechon in Manila, I do provide you with two different sources further down in the post, in case you are desperate. A real lechon de leche should be a baby pig that is still suckling its mother’s milk. We used to order these brilliant lechon de leches from one of the Makati villages but the owners moved and I don’t have their new address. At any rate, the whole purpose is really the thin crisp and utterly delicious skin. It’s the grown up version of Peking duck in a way…and the luxury is in the epidermis…the photo here is of a lechon de leche taken at the Saturday Salcedo market…
My mom didn’t bake much so if she was futzing around with the oven it almost always meant she was making leche flan. There is something about the critical mass of food and high calorie consumption during the Christmas season that means our intake of egg yolks and egg whites quintuples for a period of about two weeks… I always thought leche flan was completely over the top on the sweetness scale and it is the food I most associate with my favorite Visayan word that describes food – “ngilngig” which translates to something like “too rich,” a “tooth tingler,” “too sweet” or something along those lines. I understand that you have to grow up with the “ng” sound and if you don’t get it early you can’t say that word properly…try it on a Norwegian friend for example…heehee.
while it is something I associate with the holidays, along with pastillas de ube and other delicacies, this is one sweet that I can eat throughout the year. As long as it is made well, send them over! I have tried hundreds of pastillas de leche in my lifetime and it is amazing how much variety in quality, taste, look and feel from just three basic ingredients… milk, sugar and citrus peel/juice. I was going to attempt to make my own this Christmas season but I never got around to it (did make some pastillas de ube though, post to follow). Thank goodness I have a pretty good source for my pastillas requirements…