Experimental Studies in Brown: Chestnut Crepes with Coffee-Sausage Gravy

The experimental part was not the coffee gravy -- we've been doing that occasionally for the better part of a year, ever since we discovered that bechamel with coffee works (quite well, really).  The experimental bit was the chestnut flour that Lauren decided we needed to buy at the Coop (one of the 2 large supermarkets in Florence) yesterday.  Like, I imagine, most Americans, I've never used chestnut flour before.  I know some of the things Italian's use it for, but while they look quite pretty most of the ones I've tried taste rather less so.  Not that my tasting has been that extensive, but the point is that we had almost no idea what to do with the stuff.  Which is why we tried crepes -- ok, we tried pasta first, but with only a 1/4 cup of flour added to our normal 00/semiola mix.  It turns out that chestnut flour works fairly well for crepes (and didn't seem to make a huge difference for the pasta).  The texture is a bit different from wheat or buckwheat, but not too far into the rubbery and they end up having a nice light sweetness.  They also went very well with the sausage and coffee gravy.