Chestnuts: I prepared the chestnuts the same way as before. In brief, I boiled them and removed the outer and inner skins while they were still hot. For kakiage, you can use fragmented chestnuts.
Onion: Since I did not have any other vegetables such as carrot or gobou (burdock root), I just used sliced onion (halved first and then thinly sliced. The amount is totally arbitrary. You could add other items.
Batter: I lightly salted the sliced onion first and then sprinkled on cake flour and let it sit for 30 minutes so that the moisture from the onion came out. To make this kakiage a bit richer I added one egg yolk (optional) and more cake flour and cold water and mixed. I tried to make a rather thin tempura batter.
In a deep frying pan, I added fresh vegetable oil and heated it to 350F on medium flame. When the oil was hot, I placed a flat disk of onion and chestnuts mixture using a slotted spoon (below). To make kakiage crispy, I fried it longer than I would usually fry tempura (5 minutes) and turned them over and kept frying for another 4-5 minutes until the edges of the onion were brown and crispy.
This is a good autumnal dish. The sweetness of the onion and chestnuts enhance each other with different textures. As usual, I served this with green tea salt and wedges of lemon.
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