Sweet Chestnuts - Food for Free

This is the season for sweet chestnuts - collect them now for an excellent wholesome free food which is high in fibre and full of vitamin C. The ripened nuts fall from the tree during October and November so get out in the woods and start collecting. Not to be confused with the inedible horse chestnut, the sweet chestnut husk has longer spines and contains two or three nuts. Stamp on the spiny green husks to split them and reveal the shiny brown nuts within.
You can eat them raw but be sure to remove the inner brown membrane as this can taste bitter. The shells and inner skins can be hard to remove but roasting them makes this job a lot easier and brings out the full flavour of the nuts.
When roasting chestnuts always slit the shells otherwise they will explode. The traditional way was to roast them in the hot ash of an open fire or close to the red coals, slitting the shells of all but one of them. When this one explodes you know the rest are ready. I wouldn't recommend this for an indoor fire as the explosion can be quite dramatic scattering shell shrapnel across the room. Perhaps this method is best left to outdoor fires.
If you don't have access to an open fire the chestnuts can be cooked in a conventional oven. First cut a slit in the shell on the flat side of each nut (very important to prevent exploding nuts!) Preheat your oven to 350 degrees C or Gas Mark 4 and place the nuts in a single layer in a baking dish. Bake for approximately 30 minutes. If you just want to heat them up to make them easier to peel rather than fully cook them, then just bake for about 15 minutes. Remove the shells and inner skins while still warm. If you leave them to cool they will be harder to peel.
Sweet chestnuts can be used in stuffing and to make puree. The nuts do not keep for long so if you want to store them for future use one method is to dry them in a very low oven until hard. Once dried store them in a dry jar in a cool dark cupboard. The dried chestnuts should keep for at least a year. To reconstitute the dried nuts put them into boiling water and cover. Leave them for an hour or so and then use them in your recipe.