Chestnuts - The New Perspective, and Literally.

Maybe its just stress, having grown past the age where I believed Santa Claus was real, or what my friend terms my 'macabre sense of humour', but I've started to look at a certain christmas carol with a different perspective.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

A few months ago, this opening line would have conjured the image of a cozy warm house where the inhabitants are safe from the harsh winter outside, the fire glowing a beautiful amber, and of course the lovely smell of chestnuts wafting through. But recently, this family-friendly image has since warped into something rather morbid. Imagine, cartoon chestnuts screaming in pain as they incarcerate amongst the bits of charcoal, their smooth brown exoskeletons charred to a smoky black, burned to a crisp before it is broken open for their innards to be chomped upon.

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Either way, Christmas came a little early - 14 days early to be precise - in the form of an Oriental twist to the aforementioned Western Christmas tradition - homemade steamed chestnuts.

Fresh Chestnuts steamed Chinese-style

Their wrinkly apperance was not a result of spending too long a time in the steamer, but rather because we steamed them straight after getting them back from the market, with their skins on. Sure the skins worked as a protective layer for the cotelydon (in non-scientific terms: the 'meat'), but some of them stuck so tightly that we had to yank them off this way:

Jie skinning the Chestnuts

It was tough, and dangerous!, work no doubt, and I almost let my knife slip a couple of times. But hey, it was certainly a small price to pay for



Its a pity that I don't have a better camera to capture the smooth, unblemished brown surface of this lovely chestnut. Better still, this batch of chestnuts that we bought really had a fragrant scent and crumbly but sufficiently moist texture. Jie and I peeled the whole batch - enough to fill an entire container - and of course, ate some along the way.

Dad just tried the chestnuts and he's gonna get another bag tomorrow. Ah, more Christmas goodies in the making.