Chestnut dessert

I wanted to share with my readers a food that is relatively new to me, being from the midwestern United States: chestnuts. Well, here, they are called Maroni. It's not that I didn't know chestnuts existed, I just never knew how to get my hands on them. Once I saw Nigella Lawson, on her show Nigella Bites, make a lentil soup with pureed chestnuts. It looked so delicious and I wanted to make it, but the only place they had chestnuts was at Williams-Sonoma, and they came in a vacuum-sealed jar for 15 dollars apiece. Since I was about 17 at the time and had only a part-time job at Panera Bread, it was a little too expensive for just one dumb soup recipe. Yes, I was mad. I was mad that the secret world of chestnuts was closed off to me because of economics.

Now, here I am in Vienna, and chestnuts are everywhere! There are stands selling roasted chestnuts on nearly every corner. You can buy chestnuts to roast yourself even in the cheapest of groceries. There is an abundance of chestnut ice cream. We went to a restaurant on Friday night for drinks and dessert, and they served us chestnut mousse atop a berry sauce with little noodle-shaped pieces of chestnut paste on top (pictured above)! It's like a miracle! I guess it's not, since I believe most chestnuts come from Italy, and Austria borders Italy, so they're easier and cheaper to import. Still, I am grateful to have the experience of discovering a new food.