You say chestnut …

… I say castagna.

It’s chestnut time, as far as I’m concerned. When the autumn rolls in presaging winter, the chestnuts go in the oven to roast.

The genus is Castanea, so you can see why in Italian it is castagna. Good chestnuts are a just a bit mealy but yet still moist if cooked properly. You can always find them used in cakes and soups, but at one time–and maybe still today–they were ground down into flours and made into all sorts of gruels that people lived on.

To prepare them, I slit the crisp, leathery shell, put them on a roasting pan and into a 350-degree oven for 20 minutes or so. Let them cool a bit, and then pick away at the shell to reveal the sweet, chestnutty flesh inside.

Sadly, in the early 20th century, disease attacked a predominant North American chestnut tree species and decimated the stock–something like 25 percent of chestnut trees were wiped out in a couple of decades. Perhaps surprisingly, leading producers of chestnuts are China, Korea, Turkey–and not surprisingly, Italy. California produces chestnuts as well, though the 2011 chestnut harvest is over and reports are that a coolish spring in the northern part of the state resulted in lower chestnut yields of the Italian Marroni variety there. Imported chestnuts are generally available from September to February.

They can be as humble as roasted by a street-car vendor in downtown Toronto, or prepared in a glorious 17th century recipe where they are infused for days in a vanilla-based syrup.

Roasted chestnuts are a great snack.

And they tell great stories, as well. I used to love going into the old Vincenzo’s–I mean the original shop on Bridgeport Road in Waterloo–and watching my father pick through the chestnuts looking for the best ones. There was always discussion about whether it had been a good year for chestnuts or not. Decades later, he still indicates whether it has been a good year for chestnuts. Food holds so many memories, doesn’t it?

Just recently, I bumped into a fellow chestnut lover in a grocery store. She was a bit older than I am. And, trying to start up a friendly food conversation, as I recall from dad, I asked her how the chestnuts were this year? She replied perfunctorily that they looked fine and that I should look for shiny and not dull ones. Ones that were firm and fairly heavy.

But then she realized I was serious. She told tale of how her mother’s family in Holland would roast chestnuts and put them into their beds at night to help keep warm. She told a story how as a child she remembered putting warm roasted into her winter-coat pockets, into which were then put her cold hands, for the walk to school. Simply brilliant.

And simply charming.