For French Friday with Dorie this week, we were set a challenge that is difficult to achieve on the verge of summer (though you'd never know it with the crappy weather in Melbourne at present) - chestnut and pear soup. Chestnuts are not common in Australia, even in winter, so to obtain some at this time of year would have required some serious detective work. However, I did have a can of chestnut puree in the cupboard that I had had forever, bought at a time when every second Tuesday with Dorie recipe seemed to require it. So, I reasoned, given that the chestnuts had to be cooked until they were mashable, let's skip that and use chestnuts that are already mashed.
I made a half recipe and cooked it for only 30 minutes, given that I didn't have to worry about cooking down the chestnuts, and added a dollop of yoghurt to the top of the finished product. The soup looks like all the other soups I have made out of this book - brown and thick with black flecks. It tasted good, but given the scarcity of chestnuts here, and the fact that I am not a huge soup fan, it probably won't be a repeat.
To see what all the other Dorie cooks thought, visit the LYL section of the FFWD website.
