Sweet Potato and Chestnut Rice サツマイモ、栗ご飯

My wife got three relatively small Japanese sweet potatoes or “Satsuma-imo” さつまいも from Whole Foods.  She was vaguely thinking of making sweet potato muffins but the amount was not really enough. I suggested making sweet potato rice instead (I ended up using all three potatoes for three different dishes). Since we also had prepared chestnuts, I made sweet potato chestnut rice. To extend the autumnal theme, I also made miso soup with mushrooms and lily bulb. Since I also made new batches of pickled daikon and “asazuke” 浅漬け cucumber, I served those on the side.

This is a close-up of sweet potato chestnut rice. I sprinkled “goma-shio” ごま塩, a mixture of black sesame and salt.

For the miso soup, I added shimeji しめじand shiitake mushroom along with lily bulb 百合根 which sank to the bottom. We picked the lily bulb up with the chopsticks so they got their place in the photo op.

Ingredients:
2 cups (using the cup came with out rice cooker) of short grain rice (we used “Yumepirica” ゆめぴりかHokkaido rice we got form NY rice factory).
1 inch square kelp
1 Japanese sweet potato, peeled, diced and soaked in cold water
10 prepared chestnuts
1 tbs x4 concentrated “Mentsuyu” Japanese noodle sauce

Directions:
Wash the rice, place it in the rice cooker, add the specified amount of water, add the seasoning, sweet potato and chestnuts and turn on the switch.
When it is done (see below), remove the kelp and gently mix.

This is a very autumnal and nice rice. Nice sweetness from both the sweet potato and the chestnuts with contrasting texture of soft and somewhat crunchy. I just sprinkled the “goma-shio” and my wife, as usual, added butter and soy sauce. The soup also went very well. The nice sweetness and crunchy texture of the lily bulb and mushrooms worked well together. We were also pleased with the daikon tsukemono.