I nearly left it too late for experimenting with sweet chestnuts – the squirrels have had most of them. But while there are still a few around, I decided to have a go at making a vegetarian pâté. I also used some lovely horse mushrooms that we found growing on a verge, and some winter chanterelles, which are still out in full force. The winter chanterelles can be quite hard to spot, until you get your eye in, because they blend in with the fallen leaves – see the photo below.

I couldn’t find any existing recipes that used both mushrooms and sweet chestnuts (though while searching I did find an awful lot made with chestnut mushrooms!), so I adapted a mushroom pâté recipe from BBC Food.

It makes a subtly flavoured but tasty pâté, and is lovely on wholemeal toast. The chestnuts give it a bit of sweetness and crunch. I’m giving myself a pat on the back for this one.

Ingredients
To make about four servings:
50g butter
300g mushrooms (I used 200g horse mushrooms and 100g winter chanterelles)
75g sweet chestnuts
1 small onion
1 clove garlic
juice of half a lemon
100g ricotta
1 tsp nutmeg

Instructions
Use a knife to score an ‘x’ into each sweet chestnut, then roast them in the oven at 200C for 30 mins. Fry up the onion, garlic and mushrooms until soft. Add the lemon juice, then strain the mixture in the colander. (Keep the juices for using in something else, such as gravy.) Shell the chestnuts and add to the mushrooms. Roughly blend the mixture, then mix in the ricotta and nutmeg, plus salt and pepper if you like. Chill before serving.

Cost = 95p
50g butter – 20p
1 small onion – 10p
half a lemon – 15p
100g ricotta – 50p
That’s 95p if you already had the ingredients, or £3 if you had to go out and shop from scratch.