Chestnuts, Sauryand an Autumn Feast

I wanted to harvest the taste of autumn with my own hands, so I headed for an orchard where you can pick your own chestnuts. At the entrance stood a steel-framed shed and a banner proclaiming sweet, delicious kuri.

Beyond the path lay a whole grove of chestnut trees. Green burrs still hung on the branches, and on the ground, in the gentle dappled light, split burrs lay scattered. I held a burr down with my boot and pulled the nut out with tongs: a sweet taste of autumn, raised inside those spiny husks.

The spines really do hurt. Even so, the bamboo basket grew heavier by the minute. A big haul. It was my first time picking chestnuts, and just walking on the soil under the soft autumn sun felt wonderful.

Back at the farmhouse. Through the open doorway: a vegetable patch with big broad leaves, the neighbors' roofs, and the mountains beyond. The same thatched house as in Part 1.

The kitchen here has a water tank fed by a mountain stream. Water trickles in without pause, sending small ripples across the surface. It is an old arrangement, still good for washing vegetables and dishes.

I filled a pot from it and dropped in the chestnuts I had gathered. To drive out any insects and soften the shells, they would soak for a while.

While I waited, time for another taste of autumn and a drink. In the garden I lit charcoal in the grill with a torch and laid a single fish on the wire. This is the thing I absolutely have to eat once I feel autumn arrive: saury, whose Japanese name, sanma, is written with characters meaning sword-shaped autumn fish. Whoever came up with that had a good eye.

Over the coals the silver body slowly took on color. Fat dripped, flames rose, and the skin crisped. I set it on a black plate with a sudachi citrus, halved.

I sat down on the veranda and poured a non-alcoholic beer into a glass. In western Japan, the way to eat grilled saury is with a good squeeze of sudachi.

Sitting in the open doorway, I picked at the fish while looking out over the fields and rooftops. There is a quiet happiness in feeling the seasons turn through what is in season. Beyond lay rice paddies and the village ringed by mountains, the afternoon sun coming through the branches.

Grill saury in the garden and eat it on the veranda with a cold drink: a small dream, now fulfilled. The season for veranda beer has arrived.

The sun sank, and the great roof of the main house and the storehouse beside it faded into the evening sky. Beyond the field, the ridgeline became a single shadow.

Cosmos swayed in a corner of the garden, and persimmons hung on a branch. As Yoko Ono put it, "Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance." A light came on in the house. Now then, the chestnuts should be about ready.

A quick boil, I was told, makes them easier to peel. I cut a notch in the base with a knife and worked the shell off from there. The outer shell is so hard that in Japanese it is called the demon skin, onikawa.

Under it is the astringent inner skin, shibukawa, which I soaked in hot water once more to soften. Peel that away, and the yellow nut appears: done. The peeled chestnuts went into a bowl of water.

Peeling chestnuts was, as expected, no easy job. But it was the kind of work that empties the mind, and I enjoyed it.

I sliced an onion thin, then spread shiitake, shimeji, enoki and maitake mushrooms on a sheet of foil with a pat of butter and folded it shut. Mushrooms, too, are essential to an autumn table.

Then the other star: autumn bonito, so rich in fat that it is sometimes called toro-katsuo. I seared it skin-side down in a frying pan and decided to cook it Western-style, together with extra-early mandarins. To the oil left in the pan I added balsamic vinegar and plenty of freshly squeezed mandarin juice: a sweet, tart, refreshing sauce.

I sliced the bonito, arranged it with shiso leaves, onion and mandarin segments, and spooned the sauce over. Wakayama bonito and mandarin, as a Japanese-style carpaccio.

The chestnut rice turned out beautifully. When I lifted the lid of the pot, golden chestnuts tumbled into view. The foil parcel of mushrooms I grilled over the charcoal in the garden; opening it released steam and the smell of butter.

On the table: chestnut rice sprinkled with black sesame, the foil-grilled mushrooms, and the bonito and mandarin carpaccio. I poured a non-alcoholic beer, and the autumn feast began. Rich bonito and juicy early mandarin, together in one bite. Wakayama's strongest tag team, perhaps.

Seasonal flavors, made from ingredients I had harvested myself. It felt as if I had turned the page of the season with my own hands, and that made me very happy. Ah, autumn, the season of appetite. Out on the veranda, a lamp glowed in the night.