Season of chestnuts

Last Saturday, my mother called me and asked if I wanted to go with her to Horaiji in Aichi Prefecture. She intended to buy some chestnuts in a Michi-no-Eki or a station on the road in the mountainous area. I went to my parents’ house and had lunch, and then she took me for a drive.
This time, we visited the same places as we did in spring. But the scenery was different. Near the first destination, Michi-no-eki Mikawa Sangoku, we could see many red spider lilies. In Japanese, we call them “higanbana” or flowers of the equinoctial week. During that week, we visit the family cemetery or a large temple where Buddhist services are performed and there are many stalls selling food and toys. Though the autumnal equinoctial week was over, we saw red spider lilies in bloom also along the mountain roads.

This is Michi-no-eki Mikawa Sangoku.

They were selling chestnuts and product containing chestnuts.

In this shop, you can also sit and eat some snacks such as dumplings and goheimochi or flat cakes of mashed rice. For goheimochi, they use vegan miso sauce containing walnuts that is also available separately.

Near the cash desk, there were some Japanese unbaked sweets.

My mother bought this one to eat in the car.

Seen from a distance, it looked like an egg, but it’s a rice cake stuffed with adzuki bean paste, with a big chestnut boiled with sugar on top. To my surprise, the adzuki bean paste also contained chestnuts! In Michi-no-eki like this, you can sometimes find a superb vegan sweet.

Then, she drove further to a farmer’s market Kontaku Nagashino.

They were offering big fresh chestnuts at a reasonable price. My mother bought two bags and gave me one.

Our final destination for shopping was Michi-no-eki Mokkulu Shinshiro.

There I bought steamed kuriyokan or jellied adzuki bean paste with chestnuts. Usually, steamed kuriyokan is sold as a big long bar to be eaten by several people. So, it was lucky to find a small piece. This one is 9 cm long and is made from adzuki beans, sugar, chestnuts, wheat flour, arrowroot flour, and salt. It has handmade feeling.

When we finished shopping, we took a footbath there. Then we returned home satisfied, after dropping in the café in a hotel THE HAMANAKO near Lake Hamana.

On the next day, my mother called me saying that she had eaten up the bag of chestnut with my father. The bag I got from her weighed 650g with big chestnut. Since I had never cooked chestnuts before, I boiled one third of them according to my mother’s instructions;

1. Put chestnuts in boiling water and boil for 10 minutes with a lid on the pot.
2. Turn off the burner and leave the pot for 15 minutes with the lid on.
3. Cool down the chestnuts with ice water and then drain off the water.

I forgot adding ice to the water in the last step, but the chestnuts became edible anyway. I cut them in two to eat with a spoon.

The fresh-boiled chestnuts were good, but I wondered if they could be sweeter with some other method. So, next time, I grilled them for 20 minutes with a cut on the surface.

The surface of chestnuts was burned and hard. Maybe I grilled them too long. But I found them tasty when eating with some sea salt. What shall I do with the remaining chestnuts? Maybe they can be mixed into pancakes after boiling, or cooked with rice as in my parents’ house and many Japanese families.