Large chestnut. To peel chestnuts the hard outer skins need to be slit and then the chestnuts roasted or grilled until these skins crack. They can then be peeled off and the chestnuts boiled for ten minutes, after which it should be relatively easy to rub off the inner, papery brown skin.
Monte Amiata in South West Tuscany is one of the few, and unexpected, places to have an AOC for its chestnuts, where they have grown for over a thousand years. They grow in a ring called the castanetum around the volcano of Monte Amiata, above the fruit trees, vinesa and olives and below wilder forest. It is estimated that there are more than 300 varieties to be found in these woods, including the buono, cecio and rossolina.
