Castagne al Forno
Roasted chestnuts -- the caldarroste on the street and the oven version at home

When the air turns cold in Campania -- October into November, the hills of the interior already touched by autumn while the coast is still mild -- the caldarroste appear on the streets. The vendors set up their stands in the piazzas and along the pedestrian streets, a wide iron pan over an open flame, fresh chestnuts scored with a cross on the flat side and roasting in the heat until the shells split open and the flesh inside turns from cream to gold. The smell fills the whole piazza before you can see where it is coming from. You buy them in a paper cone, still hot from the pan, and the tradition says you should put them in your pockets to warm your hands as you walk. The heat from the chestnuts spreads through your coat. This is one of the specific pleasures of the Campanian winter that is simple and inexpensive and available on the street and requires nothing more than a cold evening and a coin for the vendor.

The caldarroste are the street version. At home, the castagne al forno -- chestnuts roasted in the oven -- are the domestic equivalent, made in the kitchen on autumn and winter evenings, eaten at the table or in front of the television, the shells peeled back to reveal the steaming, slightly sweet, starchy flesh inside. The oven method requires only a sharp knife to score the cross, an optional soak in cold water for thirty minutes to help the shell separate, and a hot oven at 200 degrees for thirty-five to forty minutes until the shells have opened and the flesh is cooked through and tender. The cross in the shell is not decoration -- without it the trapped steam builds pressure inside the chestnut and the shell can burst explosively in the oven, which is dramatic and messy and not what you want.