Aki no Mikaku - Autumn Taste
Saturday November 7, 2009
The Japanese autumn is celebrated with many delicious foods. Autumn is referred to as the season for appetite (shokuyou no aki). There is also a word for popular fall foods, which is "Aki no mikaku". They include chestnuts, pine mushroom, pike mackerel, persimmons, Japanese sweet potatoes, Japanese pears and so on. I miss all of them when I am away from Japan, but I especially crave chestnuts during this season. I like chestnut rice and various sweets made with chestnuts. In North America, there are not many dishes with chestnuts. Do you eat chestnuts in your country, if so, how do you eat them?
Japanese translation
Comments
Well, in America, chestnuts are traditionally eaten in winter. You roast them in an open fire. There’s even a song about it. It’s sort of an older tradition though. I’ve never had chestnuts prepared this way. My Gram did, tho.
Hi !
In France, chesnut can be sweet or salty. We make marron glacés for Christmas and crème de marron (chesnut spread).
Or we have it simply grilled with a touch of salt (traditionally, they are sold at brasero carts on the street during winter time) or we cook it together with some meat (pork or chicken and the like) in the oven during hours, so they take the taste of it !
Now I crave for chesnut (and for Japan) !
Here in Belgium we don’t really have a strong chestnut tradition. However, as a kid my parents often took me on long walks through autumn forests. If we’d stumble upon chestnuts, we’d collect them, wrap them in aluminium foil and throw them into the fireplace. They kind of taste like potatoes when they’re done.
Very tasty and so very cozy in front of a lit fireplace!
well, I’m from America, we might not do anything with chestnuts, but we might have some growing around our house for all I know!
I grew up in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. We roasted chestnuts each winter in our fireplace around Thanksgiving and Christmas and usually burned them a little too much, but they were good! In America, roasting chestnuts seems to be something that is more common where it is cold and where people burn wood for heating. In the Great Lakes area, many of these people are descended from German and Swedish immigrants. I think that may be who planted the many chestnut trees in these areas long ago. They were so plentiful that we used to throw them at each other after they fell from trees. They hurt!
Konnichi wa, Namiko sensei!
)
Belgium here, again. As you would expect, chocolate and everything tasty go together over here, and so you can find pralines filled with sweet chestnut paste in chocolate shops. We also use it in the filling of some meat dishes. You can buy purated chestnuts in every superstore in Belgium.
But they are still best of all roasted (or popped like popcorn) in the fire. We’ve been doing that for ever, apparently, since we have an very old Dutch saying translated this way: “to pick the chestnuts out of the fire for someone”, meaning to let someone make you do an unpleasant job for him.
I think Steven, (some stores up here) will know that one too
But the super-delicious Japanese treat called kuri yokan is match to any of these goodies, I know ’cause I’ve tried it and love it!
(waves at sensei