Marrons glacé

Chestnuts are not a traditional food in New Zealand, in fact I'd never seen anything other than a horse chestnut until I saw these in the supermarket the other week:


I must say, people who rely on these things as a staple starch certainly have to put a lot of work into getting their food. There's probably some trick to peeling the things that I don't know.

However, what I did was to slit the shells, par-boil them, then peel off the outer shells. I tried to peel the inner membrane too, but the chestnuts started to disintegrate.


Once they'd cooled I reheated them quickly in hot water so just the outsides were warm, and they were a lot easier to deal with.


The procedure for making marrons glacé is very similar to that I used for glacé kiwifruit, but on day five you boil the chestnuts for a few minutes in the syrup and added sugar, then leave them for two days, then repeat and leave them for four days.


After that you drain them …


… and dry them:


I've never eaten marrons glacé before either, so I'm not sure if they've turned out the way they should. They're nice though.