As I gather from all your wonderful comments and questions, sweet chestnuts are proving very popular! In response to some requests I have collected some sweet ways to preserve them.

Marrons Glaces
1 kg Fresh Chestnuts
500 g sugar
1 litre of water
A vanilla bean (optional)
Salt

1) Firstly remove the hard outer chestnut skins by putting the whole chestnuts in to a pan of cold water and bringing to the boil for 3 minutes. This will soften them making them easy to peel.

2) Cook the chestnuts by placing them back in the pan with some fresh water this time adding a pinch of salt and boil them for around 20 minutes. Then leave the chestnuts to stand in the water for a further 5 minutes.

3) Remove them from the pan one at a time and carefully remove the second thin inner skin of the chestnuts, take some care not to damage the soft nuts.

4) Next place the chestnuts in a shallow frying pan.

5) Dissolve the sugar and water in a separate pot over a low heat. Add the Vanilla bean and allow to simmer while gently stirring until the syrup thickens a little.

6) Pour the syrup over the chestnuts and simmer them gently on a low heat for about half an hour. Turn the heat off and let them steep in the pan for 10 – 20 minutes.

7) Serve the chestnuts with some of their syrup poured over them on their own or with whipped cream & brandy. Bon Appetite!

Castagne al rum or Chestnuts Under Rum
Roast the chestnuts
Peel them.
Put one layer of the peeled chestnuts in a glass container that you can seal hermetically.
Sprinkle about 1 tablespoon of sugar over the chestnuts.
Build up the layers of chestnuts sprinkled with sugar until the jar is nearly full.
Pour Rum over the chestnuts until they are covered and then add more Rum until you have a finger’s width of Rum above the chestnuts.
Seal and leave for 3 months.

Sweet Chestnut Jam recipe

Ingredients:

1.5 kilos of fresh chestnuts (buy and prepare at least 1850 gms to allow for bad ones)
The zest of a large lemon
800 gms white granulated sugar
I vanilla pod
200 ml water
100-200 ml rum (depending on taste. We used 200 ml)

Shell the chestnuts carefully to avoid breaking the inner skin (see Tricks and tips below).
Put them in a saucepan with the lemon zest. Cover with waterBring to the boil and simmer for an hour until soft.
Remove chestnuts in small batches from the hot water, with a slotted spoon, and peel the inner skin. The nuts need to be warm to be peeled easily. Discard any hard of bad ones (these are much harder and dark inside).
Press the soft husks through a sieve and set aside.
In a clean saucepan slowly dissolve the sugar and water over a low heat. Stirring constantly.
Add the vanilla pod and the sieved chestnuts. Bring to simmering point and simmer for twenty minutes. Stirring every now and then to stop the mixture burning on the base of the pan.
After twenty minutes add the rum and simmer for a further ten minutes, string constantly.
Remove the vanilla pod.
Ladle into warm sterilised jars. Label when cold and store in a cool dry place.

Tips and tricks:

Buy more chestnuts than you need. We had to discard 250 gms out of the 1500 grms that we had bought at the first peeling stage.
We found that the best way to peel them was to insert a small knife carefully under the skin at the top of the nut and work down towards the base. If you can then remove the base the peeling process is much easier.
When the chestnuts have softened it’s easy to remove the skins if you snap the nuts in half, the skin should easily peel away. We found that the nuts that were still hard were the bad ones. Discard these as they would taint the good nuts.
Don’t try and skip the sieving. Bunging the chestnuts in the blender takes out the air and you need a light pile of sieved chestnuts to add to the syrup.

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