Chestnuts

Ross and Maria Kelly have for the past several years kept me supplied with chestnuts from their Mount Irvine property in the Blue Mountains.  They have a property up there and grow a small orchard up there with walnuts and chestnuts and damsons, and a vegie patch that produces Jerusalem artichokes and Japanese artichokes and garlic, too, all of which I have had the pleasure of receiving in season and making of them what I will.

But getting back to the chestnuts. I had for long been fascinated by chestnuts from stories read as a child in Sri Lanka in the British children's weekly news-sheet style magazine we used to get (I think it was called Jack and Jill) which invariably in the winter editions would have scenes of children wrapped up in woolies gathering around the chestnut roasting contraption of a street vendor as snow fell prettily around them. The fascination was consolidated through endless repetitions of The Christmas Song with its opening line of 'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire'.

My first encounter with the real thing was my first batch from Ross and Maria which I roasted not too successfully in an oven, but well enough to understand at last what those pasty-faced rosy-cheeked Jacks and Jills were so enamoured of. I followed this up the next year by heading off on a chestnut gathering bus trip that my across-the-road neighbour Charlie organises annually, a trip you can read about on my foodie website  - look in the drop down menu for the article titled Not That Old Chestnut! - a title I rush to say I don't recall giving it and lay the blame instead at the keyboard of Andrew Wood editor of the much lamented Divine magazine who published the article.

I have to say that chestnuts are one of those treats whose preparation can seem like an awful lot of trouble to go through, but having gone through it now several times, the result is always worth it, for the delicate sweetness of the flesh and the multiplicity of its uses from snack food through to deliriously delicious desserts.

Image from publicphoto.org

If roasting, you give each chestnut a cross-like incision on its tapering end so they don't explode leaving bits of starchy white goo sticking to the sides of your oven, charring. I roast mine in a single layer on a baking tray at 200C or 450F for around 20-215 minutes till the shell curls back a bit where you've scored it. To get at the flesh, you pull off the shell which should by this stage be firm and easy to separate from the layer of slightly furry skin that covers the flesh. You also have to remove this skin. You need to do all of this while the chestnut is still hot, or at least very warm, otherwise the skin can be hard to peel off without taking a lump of flesh with it - and no, you do not want to eat the skin. In background research for this blog I came across a site which somewhat heretically suggests you cut the chestnut in half and them place them on a grill in the oven. Granted, however, the advantage of this is that you can check whether the chestnut is spoiled or not before you go to the trouble of roasting it. I have yet to come across a batch in which one or two don't have a sort of chestnut cancer - dark brown or black hardened areas of flesh. I have not, however, come across any worms.


Chestnuts will spoil and so they need to be used soon after they are collected, or you should peel than asap and freeze what flesh you don't use immediately. For this, and for using in soups and desserts, most sources recommend you begin by boiling the chestnut to get to the stage of removing shell and skin. To do this, you make a slit in the rounded side of the chestnut, then boil them whole for around 3 - 5 minutes. Take them off the heat and then scoop out a few at a time to peel, leaving the others in the hot water so they don't cool and become to peel skin off. Because hot water and my fingers go together unhelpfully, I have got smart and now only boil up as many chestnuts as I need for the recipe I am using at the time. Or if I am going to freeze the flesh, boil up small batches at a time.

I have recipes on my food site for Chestnut Ice Cream, Monte Bianco, and Chestnut and Lentil Soup.