Place the nuts in a wide saucepan and cook very gently in 200ml of water for another 10 minutes with the lid on and without stirring. Carefully remove the nuts and stir in the sugar until dissolved. Return the nuts to the pan and cook gently with the lid off for another five. Place the nuts in a Kilner jar, add the liquor via a fine sieve then add the brandy. Boil the chestnuts until they become soft, then let them cool and peel them. Immerse them in the liquor and let them macerate while covered tightly for about 20 days. After this period, prepare a syrup by dissolving the sugar in boiling water. Let it cool, then add it to the filtered liquor. Either all or part of the chestnuts can be pureed and added to the liqueur to make it very creamy. The classic, lightweight chestnut liqueur Veronica on Working hard on the cottage Oh ... only just found this! What a wrench to leave your beautiful cottage, I hope whoever moves in loves it as much as you do. Iy's such a special pl…

Fiona Nevile on Fiona’s traditional elderflower cordial recipe Hello Angela, The link is to Andy's elderflower chamapgne - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/gardening-blog/2011/may/12/gardeningadvice-garden… There are two recipes: a more indulgent, creamy variety and a lighter version. Today we’re sharing both, but we can already imagine which one you’ll go for. The creamy, indulgent chestnut liqueur Ingredients Maison Briottet maintains a very high level of quality. It is the selection of the ripest fruit, locally sourced where possible, from the most suitable cultivars that provides for the finest flavours. The first step on the ladder in the process is contracting the right growers to produce the finest, best quality, ripe fruit. Then, at the headquarters, the fruits undergo carefully observed maceration with very pure neutral alcohol and blending with the correct proportion of sugars to achieve the balance between fruit flavour, sweetness, acidity and alcohol to create top of the range crèmes and liqueurs. Boil the chestnuts in plenty of water in two equal batches for 20 minutes. Take the first batch off the heat and leave them in the water to keep them hot. Don a rubber glove and remove one chestnut. Make a cut two thirds of the way around the flat face of the skin and peel it away then ease the rest of the nut out of the skin. If the chestnuts are fresh both the outer and the more troublesome inner skin will come away at the same time. Boil and peel the second batch. Make a slit in the skin of the chestnut and roast in a hot oven. Once cooked, and while the chestnuts are still hot, carefully peel the hard exterior shell and fine skin.

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Don’t discard the macerated chestnuts. They can be used in desserts or dehydrated and used as garnish. Veronica on Working hard on the cottage We are still happily settled in our little house in France, but have taken to spending a few months in Spain in the winter. At first we tried differen…

The promise of this had Danny sitting, knife and chestnut in hand, for a good hour and a half last night. Shelling chestnuts is a bore. It’s fiddly. It’s very frustrating if you have bought a batch with a few bad ones as you can’t tell the state of the kernel within from the external appearance of the nut. But if you can tempt someone to help you, and have something distracting to listen to on the radio, it is well worth the effort. From Saint-Tropez, I drove the first of the winding roads past the town of Grimaud to La Garde-Freinet, a village perched high over the coast where the bric-a-brac shops and galleries sandwiched between family-run restaurants reveal a gentler pace of life than the Riviera. I climbed up to the ruined medieval fort on the hill behind and looked down upon the jumble of terracotta roofs and amber and peach-hued streets. In a small saucepan, bring the demerara sugar and water to the boil. Simmer for two minutes then leave to cool.Peeling chestnuts is one of those things that are good for your karma if you can get through the process without throwing things at the wall. The minimum requirement is a long radio play to keep you sane while you are doing it.

Once it has cooled down, add the roast chestnuts to a glass jar, top with brandy, demerara syrup and the scraped vanilla bean. Close the lid tight and give the jar a gentle shake.Fiona Nevile on Perennial vegetables: Tree cabbage Hi Lila, Thanks for your comment. You need to look for seeds on your side of the water, unfortunately :0( Import rewsrictions are tough. Something sim… Sweet chestnuts, either native or imported, are scandalously under-appreciated by the British. As the 17th century writer and gardener Evelyn laments: "But we give that fruit to our swine in England, which is amongst the delicacies of princes in other countries". Take chestnut flour; it's useful for making chestnut macaroons, florentines and, since it adds flavour instead of taking it away as flour tends to do, I use it in a roux when making sauces and soups. Besides being onerous, the shelling can be bloody. You must be careful not to let the knife slip. Eventually I put a plaster on my right forefinger and this helped enormously. Don’t cut through the chestnut while making a slit, only the skin. You want the heat to penetrate and steam cook the nut. In this recipe, brandy is used as the base alcohol. If using high proof rectified spirit, the maceration time will be reduced.