As a Chinese, the only ways I eat chestnuts are either in Chinese rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo leaves (zong zi or 粽子），meat stew, or eat as a snack (sugar fried with shells). You can also boil or steam them with the shell.
But I’ve always wanted to photograph them roasted with the shell cut and curled out, the western way. Chestnuts are extremely photogenic, from the photos I’ve seen online. So when I saw them today at the open-air market in Sri Petaling, I just couldn’t resist from buying them to shoot them!
To roast them, all you need to do is to cut a X on the flat surface of the shell into the skin with a sharp paring knife. Then roast them in a shallow baking pan in the oven (160 – 180 C) for about 20 – 30 minutes, until the skin crack open and the flesh is tender.
I find that chestnuts roasted this way taste drier than those boiled or sugar fried, but definitely much much more photogenic and rustic on camera!
Now feast your eyes on these little beauties! (Click on the thumbnails at the bottom on this post to turn on the gallery slideshow)
Cocoa pods on the trees…the yellow ones were ripe and ready to be harvested.
Cocoa pod cut to reveal seeds. The seeds would be fermented and sun dried before being processed. 
Tools for fermenting and drying cocoa seeds. The wooden box in the middle is for fermentation, the wooden stands and netting for drying. These are at least 3 decades old…
Durian on the tree.
Rambutans in heavy bunches…
Cooking Heals 