The Fat Badger

Delicious, quirky country house cookery from Will Leigh – Head Chef at The Fat Badger on Portobello Road, W10.

Chestnuts are a thing of such loveliness they should be celebrated and lauded at every public meeting of more than three people. Toasted or baked on an open fire and then split and devoured they are fabulous, especially if you’re in a pub or someone else’s house so you don’t have to tidy up the inevitable mess. Just thinking of them evokes a list of culinary matches making it feel like autumn is here in full swing. Onion squash (which the French call pottimarron: there must be some linguistic correlation there but I’m damned if I know what it is; the French for chestnuts is marron) works well. Onions, bacon, game, chocolate, celeriac, thyme, sprouts - the list goes on. A simple leek and potato soup, where chestnuts replace the potatoes, is a cracker. Pop a handful in with your braising red cabbage and a handful of chopped apples for a Scandinavian twist, you might have to up the ante with the vinegar to balance the sweetness. Celeriac and a handful of chestnuts boiled in water with a dash of milk, drained and then whizzed in a blender will make a puree to make your heart skip a beat: serve it with a roast haunch of venison, or a big fat steak.

Chestnuts; they come, cooked, peeled and ready to rock in little vacuum packed parcels that last forever and ever so no need to worry about wastage, mess or breeding a rugby teams worth of children solely for the purpose of preparing food, slightly Dickensian that. So take the brood out to the park, enjoy the end of this wonderful sunshine, gaze wistfully over misty fields and reddening leaves and say something stirring about the season of mellow fruitfulness.

Each year I take a long awaited short trip to Brittany to a chateaux set in 20 acres of prime fungi woodlands and its usual for my son and I to pick 15kg of Ceps and Chanterelle mushrooms which end up on the table in Trinity the same week, we spend the weekend locating the fungi and the last morning collecting to keep them as fresh as possible. Simply washed in luke warm water, dried and sautéed with garlic and thyme these really are the king of all wild mushrooms.”

Chestnut, bacon and borlotti bean soup

Will make lots, you’ll need it!

Ingredients

• 500g of cooked chestnuts
• 200g dried borlotti beans, soaked in plenty of cold water overnight or a tin of precooked ones, drained of their liquor
• 2 ribs of celery, very finely diced
• 2 onions very finely diced
• 2 big carrots very finely diced
• 2 or 3 big leeks very finely diced
• 150g diced pancetta or good dry cure streaky bacon
• a chilli
• garlic
• a bouquet garnis as big and extravagant as you can muster
• some really rather good and probably quite expensive olive oil

Right, so after all the chopping you’ve been doing making your sofrito - that’s a cheffy word for all those diced vegetables - you’ll probably need a cup of tea and a nice sit down. Drain the borlotti beans from their soaking liquid and pop them in a pan, cover with fresh cold water and add a few bay leaves, half a chilli, and a couple of cloves of garlic. Bring this to the boil, skim off the foamy scum on top and simmer, put your feet up and enjoy that cup of tea/quick cook’s slurp you’ve been looking forward to. If you are using the precooked tinned variety you’ll have to forgo this pleasure, but I suppose you’ll get to eat sooner. When the borlotti beans are cooked, about an hour or so, put all your chopped veggies, bacon, chestnuts and bouquet garnis in a separate tall, straight sided pot. Pour in a good glug of your lovely olive oil and put this pan on a slow heat and allow the veggies to soften a little. Take the borlotti beans off and drain their purple water away, pick out the aromatics in there and then add the beans to the veggies, give this a good old stir round. This will then need some water, the amounts are tricky to give as it depends on your pan but the water needs to barely cover the vegetables. Season this well with salt and pepper and bring it to the boil. When the mix is boiling turn the heat right down to the scantest simmer, cover the pot tightly, I use tin foil, and leave to cook for another hour or so.

As you return from doing that last bit of weeding/the crossword/a swift pint the kitchen will be full of lovely smells. Whip the tin foil off the pot, preferably with a dramatic flourish. Check the seasoning, and that it is cooked correctly, the veggies should be luxuriantly soft and shiny, the chestnuts plump and the borlotti beans silkily divine. Once you’re happy with it ladle it out and devour, probably with another glug of that olive oil we were talking about.

www.thefatbadger.com