little treasure

As I was walking to the train station on Saturday, I passed by a house in our neighborhood that has several kuri (chestnut) trees. Most times when I pass by, the kuri are either not ready and fall off the tree as green "sea urchins", or they are dried brown "sea urchins" and the birds have already taken whatever chestnuts were inside.

On this day though, I didn't see any "sea urchins", just this.

A perfect chestnut. Just lying there.

I looked around to see if anyone had dropped it or was watching me, then I picked it up and put it into my bag and went on my way.

When I came home, I thought, "now what do I do with my treasure?"

I looked in a basic cooking book and it said to peel the chestnut, soak it in water then add them to be cooked with rice. Another method was to just leave the shell on and boil in water.

I didn't have enough to make a rice dish with and I couldn't see boiling water just for this one chestnut, so instead, I peeled the chestnut up until the furry skin, then threw it into a steamer basket with some sweet potato and steamed them for 15 minutes.

After the 15 minutes, I gingerly peeled the fuzzy skin from the chestnut, the chestnut fell apart...but it was really sweet and delicious.

It was definitely a delicious little treasure.