Chestnuts: An Epic Fail Story

One day, after an appointment with my Chiropractor, Mom and I made a quick trip to Ranch 99 Market. We were going to buy some vegetables and snack, but we ended up buying a bag of chestnuts instead. After we pay for our nuts at the cashier, we went straight back home and proceed to cook the chestnuts confidently without following any How-to-Make instructions from the internet. Boy, were we wrong.. 

A gorgeous bag of Chestnuts

Not knowing the proper way to make Chestnuts become edible, Mom washed the nuts and put them in a steamer pot for hours. We just wait patiently, hoping that the Chestnuts would turn out well-cooked, cracked, and deliciously edible. An hour passed and there were no sign of any crack on our nuts. Two hours passed. Three hours passed. Nothing happened to our chestnuts. Mom decided to take a piece and took a bite. "It's not cooked," she said, "where did I go wrong?". 

The next day, Mom tried to boil the steamed Chestnuts, but her result was to no avail. Those Christmas treats reeked and ended up spoiled. 

Clean them with water

It turns out, the proper way to roast Chestnuts is for you to drown them in water for 8 hours before hand, then boil them in a pan. The result of the action would be a perfectly-cooked nuts that tasted sweet and nutty. It's as simple as that! 

Long story short, our first attempt to roast Chestnuts failed. The next time Mom and I tried to roast them, we would definitely follow the instruction properly. 

Do not steam them like we did!

Ube Mochi

Yam, or Sweet Potato, is often used as a natural food-coloring. Its' shades of purple gives an interesting spectrum of color in dessert, such as cakes, ice cream, and bread. In this case, mochi, or rice cake. 

Ube Mochi is the name of the imported snack. My friend, who goes by the name Gita, got her attention caught by this box with drawings of purple round object on it when we were shopping at Ranch 99 Market. As she leaned closer to the snack counter, she then found out that it was a box of Ube Mochi, or Purple Yam Rice Cake. Each box costs Rp21.700,00, so she decided to buy one.

Ube Mochi

We immediately open the box when we reached home. The two of us were welcomed by a series of purple mochi in red paper cups. Each box consists of 8 pieces of mochi and all of them were purple in color. The surface of the mochi as smothered in flour, so that they will not stick on the paper cups.

8 pieces per pack

I took a piece and start indulging on the chewy and sticky rice cake. The rice cake itself was sweet, but not too sweet. Inside the mochi, there was a purple yam paste filling. The filling was not too sweet as well and it tasted like how sweet potatoes are supposed to tasted like. The snack was very light and enjoyable, best to be indulged along with your friends after class.

The funky colored mochi

Purple Yam paste as its' filling