Water Chestnuts

There is hardly anything quite like a fresh water chestnut! Sweet and juicy and wonderfully crisp, it is as far from a canned water chestnut as a canned green bean is from a garden-picked Jersey string bean or a French haricot vert. From the outside, fresh water chestnuts look a bit like a chestnut, but have a black outer peel and a slightly pointy, tufted top. They are usually dull to muddy when they appear in the markets, plucked directly from their marshy beds and often crated in a hemp-lined box. They have become quite common in San Francisco and New York City markets and will survive mailing nicely if you have a friend who will send you some.