A little taste of autumn!

When October comes around, chestnuts start appearing in our local Asian grocery store. Chestnuts are very much an autumn food, though if preserved correctly, you can enjoy them all year round. Last week, my husband brought home a bag of chestnuts in their shell. I was very excited, because I just love the subtle sweetness of them. Chestnuts, when cooked, have a rather soft texture, sort of like a potato. They can be mashed or even made into flour. In fact, I had chestnut ice cream at a restaurant in Vancouver. It was great! Anyway, I let the chestnuts sit in boiled water for about 20 minutes to soften their shell. Then I spent about an hour cutting away both the outer and inner layers...the most annoying part. Once that was done I boiled the chestnuts again until they were soft. I froze them on a baking sheet before pouring them into a plastic container. Because they had been individually frozen, I can take out just what I need at anytime. So tonight I made chestnut mixed rice. The chestnuts are placed in the rice cooker along with the rice, water, sake, mirin, soy sauce and sugar. Other nice additions (that I didn't have on hand) are mushrooms (shiitake or shimeji) and abura-age (fried tofu).

A real treat tonight! Last weekend my dad had given us some bone-in chicken breasts. We rarely buy white chicken breasts because they are insanely expensive. So this was great! I roasted them with fresh garden onion, garlic and grated ginger, along with a sauce of honey, sesame oil and soy sauce. It was very delicious and provided ample leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

This Japanese side dish is known as Kinpira, though it really should contain burdock (gobo) in addition to the carrot. But, seeing as burdock is scarce in my kitchen, it was made entirely of carrots. The carrots are lightly fried before adding sugar, soy sauce, mirin and sake (I have already said these are the magical Japanese flavouring ingredients). Sesame seeds are the highlight of the dish. As a side note, it freezes well, makes an excellent bento addition and can be eaten hot, cold or room temperature.

With the cooler weather coming, cooking is much more pleasant!