One of the best side dishes I can suggest for an autumnal roasted pork!
ingredients for 4 servings (cost about 4€ pp)
- salt
- 4 small fennel roots
- 12 chestnuts
- 2 medium white sweet potatoes
- 30 ml EV sunflower oil
- 40 g butter
- black pepper
- fennel leaves
Roasted pork is one of my best meat dishes. I prepare it at least once a month, cooked in many ways. I also prepare a variety of side dishes, because the omnipresent roasted potatoes sometimes seem boring for me.
Many times during autumn I prepare this side dish which I really love. If well made it is fantastic, as the sweetness of chestnuts and white potatoes pairs perfectly with the very aromatic compounds of fennel roots.
Let´s see it.
Chestnuts have two disadvantages:
a) They spoil very easily. So right after you buy them, you have to put them in a dry and cool ambient, inside a paper bag and to consume them as soon as possible. Closing the chestnuts in nylon bag is fatal, avoid it.
b) They are difficult to get peeled. There are many techniques for peeling chestnuts (a cut at both sides, a cross at the base) but the more important is that they must be hot, very hot at the time of peeling. In Greece there is a fixed phrase “Who is gonna take the chestnuts out of the fire?”, meaning that something is too hard to try it.
So, the trick to peel “easily” the chestnuts is to boil them in batches for 5 minutes (after having carving them on sides or base) and to peel them IMMEDIATELY, when they come out of the pot. For today´s dish after peeling them we continue their cooking for 15 more minutes. We want them to be tender enough. We remove from the water and we keep aside.
White sweet potatoes are not as humid as the red ones. I would say that they are more potatoes than sweet potatoes. So, we need to precook them. And there is no better way than steaming, cut in pieces, them till tender. Selecting this way of precooking helps us keep the sweet compounds of the root.
The fennel roots need precooking too. So, after discarding the hard and fibrous external layers, we cut the fennels in pieces and we boil them in salted boiling water till tender.
We preheat the oven to 200 Celsius degrees. We mix the EV sunflower oil with the melted butter and we toss and salt the vegetables. We roast them for about 15 minutes.
We serve them, garnishing with black pepper and chopped fennel leaves.
