Hot, Roasted Chestnuts

One of the perks of film making in Jerez de la Frontera is that in the fall, you get to buy hot roasted chestnuts from the corner stand.

I am a big believer in good food, and freshly roasted chestnuts are high on my list of good things to eat.  There are several stands near my flat, but in my usual fashion, I tend to favor one over all the others.  This is partly because it's near my bank and the ATM machine where I often find myself.  In other words, it's convenient.

Uncooked chestnuts with sea salt in a container.

Plus it's near a couple of lovely fountains, and at the beginning of one of the routes I take when I go for a walk.

The guys that run this stand get their chestnuts from Ronda, a lovely town halfway up a mountain, with a couple of ancient and wonderful bridges over a spectacular gorge.  I asked them about it and was told you can also get chestnuts in Huelva, a town on the Atlantic coast not too far from Jerez.

The chestnuts are first slit open, then roasted over a kind of oven that looks like a stove pipe.  It's filled with hot coals, and every once in a while they toss sea salt on the coals, which penetrates the chestnuts just enough to bring out their flavor.

The chestnut-roasting "oven."  Chestnuts are in the pan at the top.

A paper cone with about a dozen of them costs 1 Euro.

Putting the roasted chestnuts in a paper cone for me to eat.

You peal the chestnuts before you eat them, and there is always the question of how much of the inner skin (that comes between the hard, outer shell and the inner meat) you'll be able to get off.  Sometimes, it all comes off without any trouble.  Other times, you have to work at it and still can't get it all off.

Since the inner skin is edible, this is not a real problem.

Chestnuts roasting in the pan.

And what brought on this longing for roasted chestnuts?  Well, now is chestnut season.  Yesterday and the day before I had some, and in a couple of weeks, I'm going with a group on an all day excursion they're calling the "route of the chestnuts."  By the time I get back to California, I'll be an expert.

NOTE:  The guys with the stand didn't want me taking a photo of the entire stand.  I think they forgot to take out their peddlers' license.

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