Necci Salati con Salsiccia

In the mountains of the Garfagnana and Lunigiana, chestnuts were not a luxury. They were survival. The Tuscans called the chestnut tree l'albero del pane, the bread tree, because its flour fed villages through winters when wheat was impossible to grow and too expensive to buy. Necci are what those mountain people made with that flour: simple crepes cooked between hot iron plates over the fire.

The batter is three ingredients. Chestnut flour, water, salt. Nothing else. The flour does all the work, lending its sweet, earthy flavor and distinctive brown color. When you make necci properly, you taste the forest itself, the damp autumn mornings when chestnuts fell from the trees and were gathered, dried over slow fires, and milled into flour.

The savory version filled with sausage is breakfast food, though it serves equally well as a simple supper. The sausage must be good Italian pork sausage, crumbled and browned until the fat renders and the edges crisp. Fennel seed in the sausage is traditional to this part of Tuscany. You do not need anything else. The sweetness of the chestnut and the savory pork fat create a balance that requires no embellishment.