THE CHESTNUT STORY

Sorry to lose comments but I like this picture better.

In a few days this prickly item will fall to the ground, the green shell will split open and reveal, inside, a glossy and beautiful edible chestnut.

Chestnuts roasting by an open fire springs to mind but most people here, myself included, will boil them. Some boil them with wild fennel, some with bay leaf and some with part wine, part water.

The woods are full of chestnut trees. People will come with their baskets and plastic sacks and collect a few. During the night, wild pigs will eat themselves silly.

To sit at the table after dinner with the remnants of wine, peeling warm chestnuts, each selected for its plumpness, is a very cozy thing to do.

Chestnuts formed a major part of the winter diet in the poverty stricken Tuscan hills before World War II. Even the smallest of houses had a chestnut drying space. There was a rack up near the ceiling of a room or shed, a slow-burning fire was built beneath, and kept burning almost in ember form, until the chestnuts were dry. One member or another of a family slept in the room to make sure the fire did not go out.

Once dry, the chestnuts were transported to a mill where they were ground into flour. The flour could be used in many ways, including pasta and bread making. A large portion of dried chestnuts was kept whole to be used in soups and stews. I have a recipe book with hundreds of recipes. Quite a few can be found on the internet. It was a tradition to eat chestnuts boiled in milk on Christmas Eve either before or after midnight mass.

Chestnuts remain stigmatized as poverty food but their use is creeping back, this time as chic, gourmet stuff. The flat Christmas torta made with chestnut flour, water, raisins, rosemary and pine nuts, has never really died out. We are given one every year and if it is eaten warm with fresh ricotta, it is not bad, but it is an acquired taste. Himself can't stand it.

It is very dark today, we are enclosed by heavy fog with intermittent rain. I resorted, once again, to a LED flashlight/torch, to say nothing of an umbrella and an assistant to get this picture. This is the original photograph, more revealing but rather grotty, I thought: Emerging chestnut.