October is the month for chestnuts. For this typical autumn month, we’re sharing a recipe for chestnut jam from the cookbook De Smaak van Texel from Annette van Ruitenburg. This jam is particularly good with yoghurt or a pancake.

Sweet chestnuts grow in the woods on Texel, but Annette collects them from her own garden close to De Waal and turns them into a delicious autumn jam. For this recipe, it doesn’t matter whether you have bought the chestnuts from a shop or gathered them from a garden or in the wild.

Ingredients

• 1 kilo of sweet chestnuts, gathered or bought.
• 250 grams of sugar
• the juice of 1 lemon
• 0.5 decilitres of water
• 1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
• 1 strip of lemon peel

Method

Carve a cross into each chestnut and allow them to boil in a layer of water for 5 minutes. The chestnuts are easier to peel if they are still warm. Take off the hard shell and boil them in water with a pinch of salt for 10 - 15 minutes. Now remove the inner husk and rub the chestnuts through a sieve.

Boil up a sugar syrup from the water, lemon juice, sugar, vanilla pod and lemon peel until the sugar has completely dissolved. Add the chestnut purée. Let everything boil together for half an hour. Remove the lemon peel and vanilla pod. Pour the jam into clean jars that have been rinsed with boiled water.

This jam is particularly good with the full-fat yoghurt from organic farm Novalishoeve. The jam also tastes delicious on a pancake.

More Texel recipes