Imagination fruit

Imaginary fruit anyone? That’s actually a direct translation of ‘buah berangan’- buah meaning fruit and berangan meaning imagination or daydream whichever context you want to use as but its direct translation is that day dreaming or imagination fruit so I think whoever takes eats will day dream and imagine a whole lot. *giggles* …

Buah berangan is actually the Malay word for chestnuts. It probably reminds most of a Christmas song ‘chestnuts roasting on an open fire’’ over here its chestnuts is vendors hollering ‘ buah berangan panas panas’ meaning hot chestnuts fresh from the stove. These chestnuts vendors can be found outside train stations, fruit shops and certain shopping malls. They are usually on motorcycles with a basket on wheels thingy next to it together with a charcoal stove and a large black stove. The chestnuts are fried in black gravel and this usually takes a while to cook. The vendors at the train stations and fruit stalls usually use a metal ladle though at the supermarkets they have a special machine to roast these chestnuts in. There will usually be two people who man these stalls. One will do the frying the other the selling. Once they are cooked they are placed in wooden boxes so they are kept warm and when anyone wants to buy them they are place in brown paper bags and are by weight.

My mom loves these fruits and so do i. the small ones are sweet but sickeningly sweet just the right amount of sweetness and tenderness. These fruits are available here all year around and it’s very popular among the masses. I am told that the smaller fruits are much more delicious than the larger ones and I have to agree on that theory. Anyways my curiosity got the better of me and I did a quick Google search to find out more about this delectable fruit and this what wikipedia have to say …

Chestnut (Castanea), including the chinkapin, is a genus of eight or nine species of trees and shrubs in the beech family Fagaceae, native to warm temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. The name also refers to the edible nuts produced by these trees. Most are large trees to 20-40 m tall, but some species (the chinkapins) are smaller, often shrubby. All are flowering broadleafs with catkins.
The leaves of the American and European chestnut are simple, ovate or lanceolate, 10-30 cm long and 4-10 cm broad, with sharply pointed, widely-spaced teeth, with shallow rounded sinuses between. The flowers are catkins, produced in mid summer; they have a heavy, unpleasant odour (Bean 1970). The fruit is a spiny cupule 5-11 cm diameter, containing one to seven nuts. Chestnut trees thrive on acidic soils, such as soils derived from granite or schist, and do not grow well on alkaline soils such as limestone. When wanting to grow chestnut trees on such soils, the practice was to graft them onto oak rootstocks.
Neither the horse chestnut (family Sapindaceae) nor the water chestnut (family Cyperaceae) is closely related to the chestnut, though both are so named for producing similar nuts. The name Castanea comes from an old Latin name for the sweet chestnut.

chestnuts in a hairy outer layer ....

I would never have guessed that the outer layer of the water chestnut was a hairy lol that didn’t come out right but its understood what I am trying to say .. The pictures below are of the chestnut tree and the leaves and fruit of the chestnut before it sheds its outer layer .. Wouldn’t it be nice to sit under the tree and have the fruits fall down on you? I would love sitting under the chestnut tree because of its shape. It provides shade and a cozy sitting space. Reading and writing or just taking a nap or having a picnic with someone special would actually be really nice there …. *dreams*

a chesnut tree

chestnut fruit & leaves

Tonight i have learnt something about the chestnut and i dont think i will look at it the same again. the contrast in the outer and inner layer is amazing. The inner shell is a dark brown and smooth while the outer is green and hairy. The beauty of things i would say. Its as if the brown chesnuts were adopted or maybe it was an inter racial marrigae. Whatever it is i find it truly amazing. Tne chestuts leaves actully look a lot like a guava and mango leave.

I think the chestnut street stall revolution and it’s come a long way because the way its being packaged and sold these days have really changed. If you buy the small chestnuts which are sweeter they packaging would be like this ..

chestnut bag

The material of the bag is thicker and tougher and doesn’t make the fruit sweat after it’s cooked. It in fact keeps the chestnuts warm. The bags have a little peephole. I think the whole idea of that peephole is to take the fruit out by one or shake it one at at time .. whatever it is for i just think its cute. they have just made the whole chestnut experience all the more cuter ..

peek a boo chestnuts..

roasted chesnuts - in a shell and out ..

And this final picture of the chestnut experience would top the rest .. drum roll ………. Ta da ……..



Chestnut cracker or opener if you will .. Just how adorable is that? Never in a million years did I think they would come up with something like that … I have heard of nutcrackers but never this. For me the way to open a chestnut is to squeeze the sides . my chestnut eating days has just been made easier it seems. The way to use this is by placing the rounded end of the opener to the base of the chestnut poke it and push it and voila you get the flesh inside. Sounds easy enough? Because it actually is .. Until a month ago i never knew the opener existed hmmm where have i been?

And so that highlight of my imagination fruit adventure (the opener) ends my blog for now. Now i am suddenly having a chesnut craving. I think i will get some tomorrow. Anyone want some?