Chestnut Flour (Farine de Châtaigne)

Collect the chestnuts as soon as they have fallen and store them in a warm dry room for about six weeks. In Corsica they have a little hut for this purpose called a séchoir. When they are thoroughly dried out, peel them and grind them into as fine a flour as you can. The flour will be yellow and rather sweet, and it is also rather ‘heavy’ so that it is normally used moitié, moitié, half and half, with ordinary flour to give it lightness and allow it to rise. Although grinding the chestnuts is a laborious job (unless you have a flour mill), it is well worth it in the end as the cakes and beignets made from the flour have a most interesting flavour. I used a grindstone pestle and mortar to do my grinding.