Shibukawa-ni ~ Cooked Chestnut Sweet ~

It's already November, but since the leaves are not colorful nor temperature is dropping enough to wear winter coats in LA, I don't feel like winter is coming up.

However, foodwise, the fruits and vegetables we see at the farmer's market are different from the kinds in summer, so I've decided to make something fallish today.

I bought large good quality chestnuts, peeled the hard shell, boiled them with baking soda for a couples of times, then boiled the batch the third time, and finally cooked them in a syrup made with two kinds of sugar, and rum to add extra flavor.

The most time consuming and difficult part of making this is cleaning the excess fiber and skin without breaking the inner skin of the chestnut. You need patience, but it does take your mind away from everything else, so it is like meditating in a way.

This chestnut sweet is called "Shibukawa-ni" in Japanese. You can eat it by itself, or make chestnut puree out of it, or bake different kinds of cakes using it.

Just thinking of different ways of using "Shibukawa-ni", I may run to the store tomorrow and buy some more chestnuts, so I can try out making different sweets and upload in this blog!