Chestnut Soup

It is good to end a rainy day with a hot bowl of homemade soup. This one turned out really tasty and I only added one leftover to it, baked Japanese sweet potatoes. Tree-grown chestnuts are hard to come by, mostly because the last three seasons haven't been good growing conditions for local chestnut growers. This years' chestnuts from the farmers market were really small. In previous years I'd gotten my chestnuts, fresh and dried, from the Allen Creek Chestnut Farm in Ridgefield, WA.

Steaming chestnuts rather than roasting allowed me to peel the chestnuts easier with less waste. For this soup, half were roasted and the other half were halved then steamed.

Ingredients

2 c. roasted or steamed chestnuts, coarsely chopped
4 tbsp (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1 carrot, diced
1 celery rib, diced
1/2 small onion, diced
1 garlic clove, chopped
1 1/2 Japanese sweet potatoes, cooked and coarsely chopped
1 tbsp dry sherry
1/2 tsp dried marjoram (optional)
kosher salt, to taste
freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Directions

1. In a 3-qt pot, melt butter over medium heat. Add onions, garlic, carrots, and celery. Cook vegetables for 25 minutes, or until the onions start to caramelize. 

2. Add peeled chestnuts, salt, freshly ground black pepper, marjoram and water. Bring to a boil, then let simmer over low-medium heat for 45 minutes. Mid-way through cooking, add the Japanese sweet potatoes, if using. In the last five minutes of cooking, add the sherry.

3. Remove from heat and use an immersion blender to puree the soup.

4. Serve while hot. Can garnish with fresh cream.