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Bernice Chan

When the temperature drops in Hong Kong, street hawkers appear with giant woks filled with small black pebbles and brown chestnuts. For Hongkongers, it’s a sure sign that winter has arrived.
Stirring the hot pebbles to prevent the nuts from burning also makes sure the smell of the roasting nuts lures in customers who buy small paper bags filled with the hot snack. In time-honoured fashion, they then try their best to peel the hard dark brown skin off to get at the tender, meaty, starchy lump inside without scorching their fingers.
Besides being eaten as a snack, chestnuts are a versatile ingredient that can be used in savoury dishes like soups, stews and pastas, and even some desserts.
For pastry chef Joanna Yuen of Otera in Hong Kong, they are one of her favourite things to eat, especially those bought from street vendors.
“When you walk by these hawkers with the big woks stirring the chestnuts in the ‘sand’, you smell that toastiness – a smell that makes you feel happy,” she says.

Yuen describes it as a pleasant burnt aroma, not bitter, and says she buys them from the street vendors when she can; otherwise in the rest of the year she buys packaged, ready-peeled chestnuts from Japanese snack shops.
She says chestnuts and cashews are added to soups in Chinese cooking to give a sweetness, while a traditional Cantonese dish is chestnuts and chicken braised with Shaoxing wine, ginger and dark soy sauce.
One of the most famous European desserts using chestnuts is a Mont Blanc, named after the highest peak on the Italian-French border. The pastry chef says that when it comes to making this dessert, the typically canned chestnut purée is piped like vermicelli over Chantilly cream and meringue. The result is quite sweet – but Yuen has an alternative.
“The canned ones have sugar and preservatives, so I actually find that using the whole cooked chestnut that you can find in 759 or Sogo, where it’s peeled, and then you just crush it [into a paste], without adding sugar and adding an Italian meringue instead, brings air into it and lightens the dense texture of chestnut,” she says.
According to The American Chestnut Foundation, there are eight species of chestnut trees, from the genus Castanea, found around the world. They include the American, Ozark, Alabama, European, Chinese, Japanese and Seguin species, with the last of these [being] one of two species native to China.
It’s worth noting that horse chestnuts, familiar in some parts of the world, are not real chestnuts. Edible chestnuts are encased in a spiny husk, each with two or more nuts inside, while the toxic horse chestnuts are covered in a prickly casing with a warty appearance, each containing one big nut.

Most of the world’s edible chestnuts are grown in Shandong, a coastal province in northeastern China, along with Korea and Japan. In Europe, they’re found mostly in Southern Europe but have been planted widely across the continent; while in North America they were once found in huge numbers in the east of the continent as well as the Pacific northwest, but their numbers were decimated by chestnut blight in the 20th century.
Chestnuts are not only delicious but also good for you, with lots of protein. They help lower cholesterol, and contain nutrients like vitamins B6 and C, iron, calcium, manganese, folate, riboflavin, potassium, as well as twice as much starch as a potato.
Three hours south of Perth in Western Australia, John and Linda Stanley have a 28-hectare (70-acre) chestnut farm called Chestnut Brae. They bought the farm of 50-year-old European chestnut trees in 2013, and the couple not only harvest organically grown chestnuts to sell, but have also developed an agritourism business. “We’ve got 1,000 trees. The best years we will get, say, 12 tons [of chestnuts]. Climate change globally is affecting chestnut crops, as it is affecting other farm activities. So this year, we’ve picked just over six tons,” John Stanley explains. “If it was an exceptionally hot summer, we would only pick just over one ton.” Once the chestnuts are harvested, they are graded according to size: about 30 per cent are graded as small (25mm or smaller) or medium (25mm-28mm), 30 per cent standard (28mm-32mm, sold for wholesale) and 10 per cent large (over 32mm).
Stanley says the smallest ones are the sweetest because of the concentrated sugar content, and those are fed to the Wessex Saddleback pigs they have on the farm to produce chestnut-fed pork. He explains how the medium-sized chestnuts are peeled and then frozen to sell year-round. Others are dried and ground into chestnut flour, which is naturally gluten-free.
Chestnut Brae also produces other products made with the nuts, including mustard, chutney, barbecue sauce, ale, liqueur and honey.
“The honey is a little less sweet, with slightly more savouriness to it,” explains Linda Stanley.
Finally, the large chestnuts are made into what Europeans call marron glacé, where the chestnuts are candied in syrup and glazed. These plump, sweet chestnuts are treats that are typically savoured in France during the winter holidays.

The couple have also published a cookbook – The Sweet Chestnut, A Nutty Affair – featuring 50 recipes. John’s favourite is a smooth chestnut ice cream and chestnut liqueur, and adds they don’t have to be together, whereas Linda likes adding puréed roast chestnuts to the spiced pumpkin soup.
Across the Pacific in Vancouver, Canada, chef Andrea Carlson of the one Michelin-starred restaurant Burdock & Co, says that for her too, chestnuts evoke winter.
“I like to peel them raw, slice them up and then put them into foaming butter. As the foaming subsides, the butter starts to brown and the chestnuts start to brown, and there’s just enough moisture in the butter to cook the chestnuts through,” she explains happily.
“Then you can throw in some minced shallots, some garlic, and turn that into a butter sauce, or add it to pasta. Or you could finish them with some legumes, in a lentil ragu or bean ragu.”

Carlson says it’s important to make the butter chestnut sauce last to retain the texture and freshness of the chestnuts, as she wants them to be a highlight ingredient on the plate.
“I find chestnuts really precious,” she says. “There’s just something so particular about the flavour, the texture or the smell of a fresh chestnut. Once it’s been processed and packed in a bag, it’s not at all the same for me. So that’s why we’re always looking for the fresh ones.”


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In Asia, the nuts are used in soups and stews, while in Europe they appear in pasta dishes and in desserts like Mont Blanc and marron glacé


In Asia, the nuts are used in soups and stews, while in Europe they appear in pasta dishes and in desserts like Mont Blanc and marron glacé.


Why the chestnut is so versatile, used in Hong Kong street food, French desserts and pasta sauce

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}In Asia, the nuts are used in soups and stews, while in Europe they appear in pasta dishes and in desserts like Mont Blanc and marron glacé

In Asia, the nuts are used in soups and stews, while in Europe they appear in pasta dishes and in desserts like Mont Blanc and marron glacé