Donabe Yakiguri Gohan (Roasted Chestnut Rice) 焼き栗ご飯

Kuri-gohan and O-koge
Kuri-gohan is an autumn favorite, as are yaki-kuri (yakiguri), or roasted chestnuts. This dish is slightly novel in that combines the two. Kuri-gohan is wonderful but it lacks the smokey aroma of well roasted chestnuts. Peeling chestnuts is a bit of a pain, but it is worth the effort and cannot be beat. Roasting and peeling chestnuts can be done with family or friends and makes for a nice time. This dish goes well with seasonal tsukemono pickles and grilled fish.

This dish has a good deal of sugar content from the chestnuts, sake and mirin, so if cooked in a donabe earthenware pot you can be sure that you will get a nice crust of o-koge (お焦げ), slightly burned rice, at the bottom of the donabe pot.

Yakiguri Gohan – Roasting Chestnuts Over Open Flame

The same effect can be accomplished with charcoal, an electric broiler, or even a torch.

Yakiguri Gohan – Roasted Chestnuts, Still Smoldering

These are a bit underdone.

Yaki-kuri Gohan Recipe
Using roasted chestnuts makes this recipe different from the usual kuri gohan.

Ingredients

• 20-30 medium size fresh chestnuts
• 1 1/2 – 2 cups short grain white rice
• fresh water, equal to amount of rice after washing (if using donabe)
• 2 tablespoons sake (ryorishu cooking sake or sake)
• 1 tablespoon mirin
• 1/2 – 1 teaspoon salt
• dashi kombu (kelp for dashi broth)

Preparation
Peeling the chestnuts: There are numerous ways to peel chestnuts in Japan; boiling, roasting and just peeling raw with a sharp paring knife. Yakiguri (roasted chestnuts) gives a more kobashii (smokey and aromatic) flavor so we flamed the chestnuts to peel them. A charcoal grill could be used as well, the point is the infrared heat.

Chestnuts can be peeled easiest when they are hot, the hotter the better. Try roasting them in small batches to keep them hot while peeling. I burned away most of the outer shell over the gas range and then peeled away the inner skin with my fingers and sometimes favorite ceramic paring knife.

I returned the peeled chestnuts to the flame for just a few seconds to give them some additional ‘yaki’ roast flavor and aroma.

Donabe: Rinse the rice with water several times and place in colander while preparing the donabe and other ingredients. Remeasure rice and add to donabe. Add the same amount of water as rice. Then add sake, mirin and salt. Mix chestnuts into the rice and liquid and place small sheet of dried dashi kombu on top. You could use up to 1 cup of sake in place of water if you want to be very luxurious. Don’t skimp on salt, chestnuts need a good deal of salt to bring out their sweetness.

Heat until near boil and cover donabe. Reduce heat and set timer for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, remove heat (if you are using an electric range, move the donabe from heat source) and set timer for another 10 minutes.

Uncover and mix gently with shamoji rice paddle and break chestnuts into pieces. You could leave them whole if you like, but that creates a presentation conundrum, or at least in Kyoto it might.

Yakiguri Gohan – Roasted Chestnuts, Ready to Peel

These are well done, the shell has almost been burned away completely. The trick is to peel the inner skin while the chestnut is still hot.

Yakiguri Gohan – Peeled and Roasted Chestnuts

I put these to the flame again for a few seconds after peeling.

Cooking Yakiguri Gohan in Donabe

Cooking Yakiguri Gohan in Donabe

Cooking Yakiguri Gohan in Donabe – Boiling and Ready to Cover

Cooking Yakiguri Gohan in Donabe – 20 Minutes Later, Dekita! (Done)

Generally the kombu is discarded, but I (Peko) like to bite off a chunk and chew it while I am serving the meal.

Yakiguri Gohan – Two Ways to Serve

The Presentation Conundrum
The presentation conundrum is with the whole chestnuts, on the right. Some will probably have been broken in the peeling process and the rice sticks to the tops and sides of the chestnuts in an unnatural and icky way. While the whole chestnuts look much more sexy, gently breaking them with the shamoji rice paddle solves the presentation conundrum and creates a uniform taste. This dish has only three main flavors: rice, chestnut and salt. If you don’t have whole chestnut in every bite, you might be disappointed.

Yakiguri Gohan – Whole Chestnuts

Nice o-koge charring on rice from the bottom of the donabe, this maybe a little too much. The o-koge should never make the rice become hard nor black, golden brown is what you are after. A tiny bit less heat would have made the o-koge come out perfect.

Yakiguri Gohan – Rice and Chestnuts Mix

The bit of rice at the top right of the bowl sticking out is very bad form, you can tell a foreigner served this! Everything inside the bowl, no stray rice sticking grains to the mouth of the bowl!

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Boiled chestnuts mashed with sugar and twisted in fabric into shape makes kurikinton, an autumn delicacy and favorite souvenir of the mountainous areas of central Japan.

Kurikinton and Omiyage Culture

Omiyage, or the giving of souvenirs, usually famous products from ones own region or a visited destination is an extremely important aspect of Japanese culture. Last week, a business associate from Gifu Prefecture came to see me in Kyoto bearing kurikinton from a small but very famous shinise. Gifu, the mountainous prefecture near the big city of Nagoya is very famous for its chestnuts and persimmons. The store that makes this kurikinton, Tsuchiya in Ogaki city is this year celebrating its 250th year in business and has a grand total of 4 products producing about $22,000,000 a year in revenue. That’s a lot of chestnuts!

Authentic kurikinton only has two ingredients; chestnut and sugar. Not even any water. Fine Gifu chestnuts are boiled and then mashed with sugar. They are then hand-formed into a ball inside a piece of cloth which is twisted at the top, producing the distinctive kurikinton shape. The taste is like much else in Japan; deceptively simple, rich, not too sweet and delicately refined. While the recipe may sound like it would produce a pasty confection it is not. The consistancy and some aspect of the taste might tempt one to think of cookie dough, but the flavor is neither immature nor half-baked.

The night my friend arrived, at dinner he passed out beautifully wrapped packages of Gifu kurikinton omiyage to several lucky people including myself. The next day, after we took in some Kyoto sights and lunch, before departure he was hunting down some novel Kyoto omiyage to take back to family and employees. In Japan, one would imagine that no matter the economic downturn, the omiyage business never suffers.

In true shinise form, Tsuchiya has a really crappy website from which you can order by fax. How’s that for modernity? I guess that makes getting their creations for a visiting friend all the more special!

Kurikinton Box

Kurikinton Under Wraps

Kurikinton Unwrapped

Kurikinton Served

Kurikinton – detail

Kurikinton Interior

Tsuchiya website (Japanese language)

Ryuen specializes in a simple and elegant wagashi that combines a center of candied kuri (chestnut) embedded in koshian (sweet azuki bean paste) with a coating of sugar and kuzu (arrow root starch), some with the addition of sugary green tea powder (maccha).

Ryuen‘s wagashi is decidedly classical in look and feel, expressing the aesthetic of wabi-sabi and is popular with many of the Kyoto temples that are closely associated with the tea ceremony.

Ryuen is a shinise (an old and long-loved store) in Kyoto that is just down the street from the Imperial Palace (Gosho) and creates a series of wagashi that one could easily imagine as a purveyor to the imperial court for a millennium. (Actually, Ryuen’s history only spans some 60 odd years.)

Ryuen’s wagashi is considered by many to be to well express the ancient Japanese aesthetic of wabi-sabi, a beautiful and natural expression of imperfection. Wabi-sabi is of course deeply associated with the tea ceremony, as is wagashi. Ryuen’s wagashi is used by such temples as Ryoan-ji and Myoshin-ji.

Ryuen’s Meibutsu: Rakuseki
All of Ryuen’s wagashi are pressed into shape in wooden forms. This one of the classic wagashi. The basic shape and ingredients remain the same but various design motifs are available. Many are related to the seasons, flower blossoms and so on. Others are symbols adopted from ancient Chinese culture and also Kyoto’s architectural heritage.

The confections, especially the white one, with the azuki brown of interior showing through in a most irregular way, have a pronounced rough-hewn quality. This is wabi-sabi — in food. Looking at these confections in the showcase, one immediately realizes that no two are alike.

Raku (楽) Seki (石), literally means ‘happy stone’. The chinese character, raku ‘楽’ (‘樂’ is the classical way to write the character and the form that appears on rakuseki) can be seen on the top of the confection. And seki (stone) comes from the shape of the confection.

There are two varieties, sugar and maccha.

Meibutsu: Rakuseki

Meibutsu: Rakuseki

Here the interior is exposed. The candied chestnut is the yellowish center. Notice the thickness and granular quality of the green maccha rakuseki as compared to the white.

Ryuen Storefront

The white noren, or shop curtain has the shop name whiten in brush and ink. The art of the noren is another subject that an entire blog could easily be devoted to. Originality and beauty, right down to the quality and beauty of the fabric is fascinating.

Notice the flower arrangement (ikebana) in the window on the right.
Ikebana

Ikebana flower arrangements are ubiquitous to the ‘nice’ shops and restaurants of Kyoto. The wooden plaque on the right states the name of the ‘school’ of ikebana and the master’s name.

These flower arrangements change every few days and invariably express the season. Here are plum blossoms and the green leaves are nanohana (rape blossoms), a popular, attractive and tasty late winter and early spring green in Kyoto.

The Neighborhood: Sighting Spot

This is Shimo Goryo Shrine, right across the street from Ryuen. It is quite a delightful shrine and is no doubt the perfect place to sit down and enjoy some Ryuen rakuseki!

The Neighborhood: Shimo Goryo Shrine

Notice the pink plum tree.

The Neighborhood: Shimo Goryo Shrine

A plaque explaining the history of the shine. These are everywhere in this historic city, written in Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean.

The Neighborhood: Shimo Goryo Shrine

Plum blossoms.

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English:
English menu: none
English website: none | Japanese language website (nice photos)
Service/Staff: so-so
Price: 600 – 1,200 yen. (no sit down area, take-out only)
Location and Access: Ryuen is located on Teramachi Street just south of Marutamachi-dori (street), on the south-east corner of the Imperial Palace (Gosho) grounds.
Address: Kyoto-shi Nakagyo-ku Shimo Goryomae-cho 644-1
(京都市中京区下御霊前町644-1)
Telephone: 075-222-0500
Near Sightseeing Spot: Kyoto Gosho (Imperial Palace). Shimo-goryo Shrine, a small but delightful, and historically significant shrine across the street from Ryuen.
Map:

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