Every year around this time, I constantly crave one of my favorite foods, kuri-gohan, or chestnut rice. The combination of sweet chestnuts on top of the even more subtle sweetness of shinmai (new-harvest rice) is irresistible. (Check out my classic recipe for making chestnut rice from 2016.)
And yet, I often hesitate to make it because the preparation can be such a bother. Even after you remove the spiky burr, the chestnut protects itself within two more layers of skin. The outer layer, called the onikawa — or the “ogre skin" — is not that hard to remove if you soak it well. But the thin inner skin, called the shibukawa — or "bitter skin" — is almost impossible to remove, and ruinous to your fingers if you try.
So I went looking in my collection of shojin ryōri (Zen Buddhist cuisine) resources for some ideas, since chestnut rice is a classic of this genre, and found an alternative way to prepare it. Instead of removing all the inner skin, you can get rid of its bitterness by sauteing the chestnuts in dark sesame oil instead, which also adds an extra layer of rich, nutty flavor to the rice.