Roasting chestnuts

We had a kilo and a half of chestnuts yesterday which we roasted in a *holey* pan - not over an open fire.  We were given the pan soon after moving here but don't use it very often as the chestnuts don't grow this low - they are all up around Mecina and Yegen.  Probably lots of other places too but that's the nearest they come to us.

It took ages to cut the cross in them all, I'd read somewhere recently that it's easier to open them after roasting if the cross goes across the top of the chestnut then as it roasts, the cross opens up and you have something to pull on.  And that worked well.  But the nuts need opening when they're still quite hot as the inside layer  seemed to come off much easier when more hot than cool.  Didn't matter for the ones we ate as we peeled but I wanted to freeze some them for chestnut stuffing to have with the Christmas turkey.

Monty and Pip sat as close to the kitchen table as they could get to catch anything we dropped, don't what they made of all the painful oohs and aahs as our fingers got hotter and hotter the more we peeled.  We ate quite a lot I thought, but still had 800 grams left over for the freezer.  And all the shells are in a bag ready to go into the woodburner when we light it.

Locally there is a celebration of the chestnut,  any excuse for a fiesta!   It's the 15th year they've celebrated!     Jornada de la Castaña   'The Day of the Chestnut'  is on tomorrow,  Halloween celebration tomorrow night and  the 4th Jornada de la Seta   'Day of the Mushroom'   is on Sunday.  This is the programme of events that are happening up until Christmas in both Mecina and Yegen. 

Half an hour later....

Just had a quick break as Fernando stopped on his way past,  he has left us 6 large aubergines and a marrow, or at least I think it's a marrow.  I always assumed marrows were green like a large courgette and he called it a calabaza - calabazín is a courgette, this is the big version.  But it's orange not green, the last one we were given by Paco was a green one, again a calabaza, and some we roasted with the Sunday joint, the rest I added to the soup pot.  So I'll put some round the roast on Sunday and maybe make soup again....  I wonder if it freezes then I could add it to stews and curries when needed.

**re:  the holey pan.  Looks like a frying pan but with holes in the base and with quite a long handle.  Probably easy to make out of an old pan,  ours came from the local market and I think was about 75 cents.

Update...the calabaza weighs  2.5 kgs,   it's about a foot long and more of a pale golden honey colour than orange.   Maybe it's just  a ripened version of the one we had before?