Castagne

There are few things that remind me more of the autumn I spent living in the countryside outside of Pisa than chestnuts.

One night while I was living there, we holed up in the rectory of the tiny church across from my house, and Don Dante, who was the pastor, shared local wine and roasted chestnuts (castagne in Italian) with a dozen residents of the tiny village. It was a wonderful fall ritual that a temporary resident -- me! -- happily observed and participated in.

Il Nostro Inviato prepared the chestnuts you see in the photos here yesterday. They are actually from Italy! He bought them at Your Dekalb Farmers Market outside of Decatur.

You can adopt this as your own fall tradition, but you have to remember to score the chestnuts! Otherwise they will explode in the oven. So use a sharp knife to make the incisions (you can see the little slash marks in the chestnuts in the photo below), place the chestnuts on a cookie sheet, and then slide them into the oven for 20 minutes or so.

I find the power of scent almost humbling at times in its capacity to conjure up a time and a place so far from where you are now.

Just as chestnuts whisper, "Fall, 1995, Pisa" in my ear, so does that other autumnal smell, the scent of crops burning in the early evening.

Perhaps it may not seem very evocative, but I inhaled that scent as I biked through fields in the Pisan countryside that were still smoking. On my way back from the train station where I had just returned from Florence, I felt like I was biking through a sepia-toned photo. Instead, I was just living.


Yay chestnuts!