Chestnuts

In Garfagnana, in the early twentieth century, there were 18,000 hectares of chestnut trees. The fruits were valuable and protected by clear rules of municipal statutes. The chestnut, in fact, do not throw anything.
Giovanni Pascoli, who lived his maturity in the valley and he dedicated many poems to it, sang the uses of the wood of the leaves, young shoots, fruits and even his ashes in an inspired poem.
The cultivars are varied to accommodate soils, l`altitudine, exposures of the slopes of the Apennines and the Apuan Alps, with gradients varying from 150 to 1200 m. above sea level. In a land border, as was the Garfagnana were the favorite varieties of flour, which could provide food for all of the winter. The use of chestnut flour commonly called “neccio” is therefore the most common and in other times was the food base of the mountain areas and the equivalent of wheat flour for the lowland areas earning the nickname to “wooden bread”, “breadtree”, the chestnut tree.
The contemporary cooking has rediscovered more traditional tastes in combinations. With flour cooked in boling water prepares is prepared the “polenta” to accompany meats and cheeses. Always with the same batter, but cooked in “testi” of  iron over an open fire, they make “necci”. “Frittelle” if cooked in olive oil and “castagnaccio” if cooked in the oven with nuts, orange peel, oil, rosemary. But even bread or dumplings served with tasty mushroom ragout or ricotta.