That Old Chestnut

Yesterday Jen made "Chicken Madness" which I came home to around midnight. At first I thought she may have been having some sort of psychotic episode when she declared, "I made chicken madness!" However, it was of little or no consequence when I tasted how delicious it was.



This is what the Chicken Madness looked like. Delectable.



I started off tonight with some sliced Clementines with hot sauce and salt, a recipe passed down from my Guatemalan grandmother. It's a traditional snack in Guatemala (where she is from, you see). I served them with some (read: all the rest of our) greens. Goat cheese and pistachios were some items in the fridge that lent themselves to this salad pretty well.



For the main course I cooked up a little garlic, shallot, butternut squash, and shiitake mushrooms with a little sage (no thyme because we didn't have any) and a small amount of shredded Parmesan. I was also going to fold in a little ricotta at the end but the container in the fridge was molded over. I used a little chestnut puree along with chopped chestnuts.

I also learned an interesting fact today: chestnuts contain no fat! So this entire meal was basically a lowfat meal, getting its only fat from a tiny amount of olive oil and Parmesan cheese. I hadn't intended this to be a quasi-healthy meal but it really turned out to be. Even using skim milk it was a very heavy and creamy sauce.

The whole result was yet another seasonal meal of which my Guatemalan grandmother would be very proud. "Natito," she would say. "I love you too much."