Chestnut and Vegetable Terrine

The last couple of days it was really cold and unfriendly for the season so I had a look at this recipe, which uses root vegetables and is thus perhaps a bit wintery for the season. But it can be made into a spring dish with spring vegetables (frozen chestnuts or dried chestnuts being available the year round).

 

 

What you need

• 300 g chestnuts peeled
• 2 spring onions finely chopped (can be substituted with onions or leek, depending on availability)
• 3 cloves of garlic, pressed
• 80-100g finely chopped carrots
• 80-100g finely chopped fennel
• 80-100g finely chopped celeriac (experiment, substituting kohlrabi, celery, small peas, peperoni, zchini, etc.)
• 50 g bread, cut small and soaked in white wine until soft
• 3 eggs
• 300 ml crème fraîche
• Salt and pepper
• herbs (lovage, sage, parsley, majoram)

What you do

1. Steam the chestnuts until they are soft and mash them (completely not as shown in the picture).
2. In a frying pan, melt a knob of butter and sauté the onions, garlic and then the other vegetables making sure they still have plenty of bite.
3. Mash the bread and mix with the chestnuts.
4. Mix the eggs, the chestnut mash and the crème fraîche and stir in the vegetables.
5. Season with salt, pepper and the herbs.
6. Pour into a terrine dish or a cake tin that has been buttered thoroughly and line with buttered baking paper.
7. Sit in a baking tray filled with hot water three quarters of the way up the terrine dish or baking tray.
8. Put in the oven at 180° C for about an hour or until a skewer stuck into the terrine comes out clean.

Remove from the terrine dish / cake tin, cut with a sharp, hot knife and serve with steamed vegetables lightly seasoned and drizzled with olive or even better pumpkin seed oil.

Tastes fine cold as well.