Chestnut foraging in London

The smell of roasting chestnuts at the corner of the Strand is the smell of Christmas, is it not? 

As a lifelong townie, I can’t help feeling slightly suspicious of eating anything I basically found on the floor. I don’t know the first thing about foraging in the wild, but for the last two Octobers I’ve eagerly headed to London’s parks to hunt for chestnuts. It’s not only satisfying and fun but a very good way to save quids on buying them in the supermarkets.

This year, the trees seemed to have dropped their fruits earlier than usual and all the chestnuts I found in Greenwich Park and Hyde Park were miniature compared to last year. It wasn’t exactly elegant rootling around under the trees, especially because it’d rained the day before. Then, when I got home and started washing and cooking the chestnuts, I had an irrational fear. What if I poison myself?

They weren’t really big enough to be worth roasting, so I followed instructions found on the internet  for making chestnut puree and washed, halved and boiled the chestnuts for about ten minutes. Then there was the laborious task of peeling them. Luckily some had come out of their shells in the cooking, but most of them had to be picked or squeezed out by hand. At last, after about forty minutes of work, I had one small, rather unpleasant-looking bowlful of chestnut pieces.

Before blending them with sugar and cream to make the puree, I decided I’d better sample the goods. They tasted just as chestnuts should, with that thick, sweet yet slightly savoury chestnutty richness. My boyfriend – who, initiated in countryside ways, will happily pluck random-looking berries to eat, unwashed, there and then - took one look and refused to touch them.

Here are some top tips for lovely, lovely chestnuts.
Chestnuts are prone to mould, so once you’ve found them, get them home quick and cook them right away.
Always pierce the shell of the chestnuts before cooking or they’ll explode – not a good look, trust me.