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Sunday, December 29, 2013

Japanese chestnut rice (kurigohan)

We had one bag of chestnuts already. I cut crosses in them and roasted them. They were good, but also injurious. Bravely / foolishly S bought a second bag of chestnuts, and I prepared them.

I was at D+K's place right before prepping the first bag, and they also had some chestnuts. K was soaking them, which I'd never seen before. She's Japanese, so I wondered if it might have to do with some Japanese preparation... I stumbled across Kurigohan (Japanese chestnut rice) - basically just Japanese rice cooked with chestnuts - and figured since it was so simple it had to be amazing. Also, the soaking might help alleviate injury risk since the shells would be softened and perhaps easier to cut into? I used this recipe.

~20 medium chestnuts*
2 1/4 cups sushi rice
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tbsp mirin
1 tbsp sake (a gift from KC after my aerial performance - s+i drank the rest and it was truly delicious)
1 tsp salt
1 piece konbu (used half a sheet of sushi seaweed as that's what we had)
2 2/3 cups water

black sesame seeds
chopped spring onion greens

Soak the whole chestnuts in boiling water for about 30 min.

Meanwhile, rinse the rice and then soak it (separately) in cold water for 30 min.

When the chestnuts have soaked, remove them from the hot water one by one, score the shells and remove them. Take care to remove the whole of the inner shell layer even though it is tricky - it is bitter. If it doesn't come off easily put the chestnut (minus outer shell) back in the hot water for a few more minutes. When they are peeled put back in the hot water for a few minutes. Don't expect to complete this step quickly - it is slow and fiddly.

When the chestnuts are all peeled, rinse them and rinse the soaked rice and put the rice in a large saucepan. Add the water, soy sauce, mirin, sake and salt and mix. Put the chestnuts on top, then lay the seaweed on top of them, cover and simmer gently for 20-30 min, until the liquid is all absorbed and the rice is tender. Turn off the heat and leave, covered, to steam for ~10 min. To serve, sprinkle individual servings with black sesame seeds and chopped spring onion greens (if you want).

Note: We have figured out a more weeknight-ready version. For this, roast the chestnuts whenever you have the oven on, peel and keep in the fridge til you want to make the rice. Dispense with all the soaking. When ready to make, put rice, soy, mirin, sake (or more mirin), salt and water in a pan and mix; crumble chestnuts on top and lay seaweed on top of that. Cook as above (perhaps a little longer).


This is amazing. The rice acts as a vehicle to extend the wonderful sweet/nutty chestnut flavour, and the textures of the two together are really comforting and more-ish. The recipe made quite a lot but S loved it so that is not a problem... Note, the chestnuts tended to break up when I mixed it all together in the end, which I think is good as means better distribution of chestnut pieces - so it really doesn't matter if they break when peeling.

*I suspect the original uses Asian chestnuts, due to its origin... Apparently there are Asian, European and American chestnut varieties, and although all quite similar they are different. And the American chestnut is almost extinct due to a disease it caught from the Asian one (in Brookline?!). So these were probably 0European, possibly Asian. I need to corroborate all of this!
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