Fresh walnuts - oh my gosh

Okay, this post will probably cause 99% of you to groan, "Well, duh!"

I channelled Martha Stewart this year, and made these little salt and pepper vessels out of walnut shells. Actually, I saw them in Williams-Sonoma's Thanksgiving Entertaining cookbook--but I digress....


While shelling them, of course I did a fair amount of tasting them. I don't think I ever realized how vastly more wonderful walnuts taste directly from the shell.

PS. Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I am greatly thankful for this one-of-a-kind website where we can all go to share thougts and ideas, and especially thankful for all the wonderful people I've "met" here.

I don't think I ever realized how vastly more wonderful walnuts taste directly from the shell.

Carrie,

Where, and how, were you raised?

In fact, we are shelling our very own walnuts this morning for the dessert today. I have a large English walnut tree that overproduces every two years--this was one of them.

I also have trouble with squirrels...

Thomas, sheeesh--I know! Actually, my mom always put them out around the holidays, but as a kid I was not all too fond of nuts. Even as I got older and I developed a deep affection for nuts, it didn't occur to me that the shelled versions would be worth the trouble of cracking them. (Hmmm, except in the case of pistacios...but cracking them with my teeth is a bit of a pleasure all its own. Don't tell my dentist.)

I'm extremely envious of you having your own walnut tree. What's for dessert? I'm putting the "fruits of my..." salt/pepper project "labor" into the salad. Baby lettuce, thinly sliced fennel, oranges, and green onions with an orange champaigne vinaigrette. And chopped FRESH walnuts.

Carrie,
Walnuts, schmalnutz, what I need to know is what kind of salt is that?
Turkey 'Winger

I have a large English walnut tree that overproduces every two years--this was one of them.

I also have trouble with squirrels...

I have a similar situation with our almond tree - seems to have one good year, and one off year. I wonder why that is?

We don't have squirrels, but we have to fight off the crows.

Carrie,
Walnuts, schmalnutz, what I need to know is what kind of salt is that?
Turkey 'Winger

Just Kosher salt. Nothing fancy.

I think that's a terrific idea. Mind if I steal it?

I think that's a terrific idea. Mind if I steal it?

I'd be honored.

FWIW, I will hazard to guess many of the walnuts packaged/sold by Blue Diamond come from my Neck o'the Woods.

Walnut orchards 'R' us around these parts....got a huge grove at the end of my street. The local birds keep flying by and droping them on the roof of our house in an attempt to crack them. Pretty comical sometimes....sounds like gunfire

I'm extremely envious of you having your own walnut tree. What's for dessert?

I'm told some kind of baked apple dessert, with walnuts. I'm not much of either a dessert eater or a baker, so I stay away from the oven.

As for pistachios, one of the many food weaknesses from which I gladly suffer. I had the good fortune to have spent two years in Iran eating the real ones from the source. Almost spoiled me from eating them again, but I got over it and do buy them from Ca. I've been known to put away a pound of them before the remote switch is hit and the movie starts...

I have a large English walnut tree that overproduces every two years--this was one of them.

I also have trouble with squirrels...

I have a similar situation with our almond tree - seems to have one good year, and one off year. I wonder why that is?

We don't have squirrels, but we have to fight off the crows.

Left to their own devices, many fruit trees do the alternating year thing. The the biochemical details are beyond me but in my layman's understanding, the energy needed by deciduous plants to set fruit buds and to support the following year's fruit production is collected from sunlight via photosynthesis in the leaves and stored in chemical form as sugars in the roots. In years of heavy fruit production, all that energy goes to ripening the fruit and the plant is too wasted to produce the following year. The next year, no fruit, lots of energy in reserve for the next year. And so on. In many cases the pattern can be evened out by thinning the fruit but few people want to tackle that on a large tree.

I have a large English walnut tree that overproduces every two years--this was one of them.

I also have trouble with squirrels...

I have a similar situation with our almond tree - seems to have one good year, and one off year. I wonder why that is?

We don't have squirrels, but we have to fight off the crows.

Left to their own devices, many fruit trees do the alternating year thing. The the biochemical details are beyond me but in my layman's understanding, the energy needed by deciduous plants to set fruit buds and to support the following year's fruit production is collected from sunlight via photosynthesis in the leaves and stored in chemical form as sugars in the roots. In years of heavy fruit production, all that energy goes to ripening the fruit and the plant is too wasted to produce the following year. The next year, no fruit, lots of energy in reserve for the next year. And so on. In many cases the pattern can be evened out by thinning the fruit but few people want to tackle that on a large tree.

That's for sure. The only way I can thin the walnut tree is to cut large branches from it, and to do that I hire someone. This tree was already more than a decade old when I moved here 24 years ago!

You should try fresh almonds from the shell, shortly after harvest - not the kind you buy in a bag at the grocer.

[Robin Garr]

You should try fresh almonds from the shell, shortly after harvest - not the kind you buy in a bag at the grocer.

No joke! I enjoyed about a bucket full at Quinta Nova (former Burmester) in the Douro a couple of years ago, and still think of them as a possibly illegal addictive substance. Still warm from the roaster, moist with their own oil ... incredible.

[Jenise]

Thomas, what's an English walnut vs. the average walnut I buy at the store?

And Carrie, yeah, fresh is wonderful. And the closer they are to the tree, the better. When we were in China last year, we were in a parklike setting looking at some monuments, and there was a woman sitting kind of outside a restroom we'd used. She lifted her hand to me and smiled, and I could see in her hand she had a walnut. Very small, and rounder than the walnuts I see here. I took it, then she took another out of this bag she had with her and demonstrated how to break it open, ate hers, and then smiled the biggest smile to indicate to me how much I'd enjoy it. It was the sweetest walnut I ever ate, in two ways.

Jenise, answering for Thomas, the English walnut *is* the commercial walnut you buy in the store, native to Europe. That's as opposed to California's native walnut, the black walnut. The black walnut has great flavor but also a thick shell (that is a real pain to open) and smaller meats - the reasons you don't see them in stores. Black walnut is adapted to New World soil-borne diseases (oak root fungus, in particular) and so as a rule, English walnut is grafted onto black walnut rootstock in California, in much the same way as vinifera grape varieties are grafted onto New World rootstock for phylloxera resistance. The graft usually makes walnuts easy to identify when you see them from the highway in CA's Central Valley - the rough black walnut bark next to the ground with the smoother English walnut bark above.

On a separate walnut-related subject, when I worked in the area, I used to buy my walnuts from Teri Harvey (actually, her father, I think), owner of the infamous Grandpere Vineyard and also a few walnut trees. There are still some walnut trees in the Shenandoah Valley of Amador County, although not nearly as many as there used to be. Walnuts and lamb used to be the main agricultural products of the area. The sheep have almost disappeared in the face of the grape's profitability and the walnuts are going the same way.

Jenise, answering for Thomas, the English walnut *is* the commercial walnut you buy in the store, native to Europe. That's as opposed to California's native walnut, the black walnut. The black walnut has great flavor but also a thick shell (that is a real pain to open) and smaller meats - the reasons you don't see them in stores. Black walnut is adapted to New World soil-borne diseases (oak root fungus, in particular) and so as a rule, English walnut is grafted onto black walnut rootstock in California, in much the same way as vinifera grape varieties are grafted onto New World rootstock for phylloxera resistance. The graft usually makes walnuts easy to identify when you see them from the highway in CA's Central Valley - the rough black walnut bark next to the ground with the smoother English walnut bark above.

On a separate walnut-related subject, when I worked in the area, I used to buy my walnuts from Teri Harvey (actually, her father, I think), owner of the infamous Grandpere Vineyard and also a few walnut trees. There are still some walnut trees in the Shenandoah Valley of Amador County, although not nearly as many as there used to be. Walnuts and lamb used to be the main agricultural products of the area. The sheep have almost disappeared in the face of the grape's profitability and the walnuts are going the same way.

Mark,

I also have a black walnut tree on the other end of the property. I've tried opening them but never could and then I had to carry the black stain on my hands for weeks!

I've run over the black walnuts with my tractor to crack them open. When it works, the nuts of course are inedible, as they are crushed with the shell... The result, I have no idea what they might taste like, but would love to know first-hand.

Thomas, my grandfather used a vise mounted on his workbench.

There's an alternate method:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSeXnmm9BWI

Mark, I also have a black walnut tree on the other end of the property. I've tried opening them but never could and then I had to carry the black stain on my hands for weeks!

I've run over the black walnuts with my tractor to crack them open. When it works, the nuts of course are inedible, as they are crushed with the shell... The result, I have no idea what they might taste like, but would love to know first-hand.

Thomas, I am not sure that I understand just what the problem is that you have with black walnuts. When these fall from the tree they are encased in a green outer shell, from which they have to be removed. I generally put them in a burlap bag and run over them several times with the truck. After that, they have to be air dried for a couple weeks or more. Only then can you crack the shell and eat the meats from the nut. Actually crack one and see if the meat is dry, and if not leave the rest of them alone. If you would like to try them, they can be purchased in almost grocery store in the baking goods section along with other nuts.They are pretty expensive, but worth every penny. I like them over vanilla ice cream, and also used in chocolate fudge instead of the english walnut one more frequently sees in fudge.

[Jenise]

Jenise, answering for Thomas, the English walnut *is* the commercial walnut you buy in the store, native to Europe. That's as opposed to California's native walnut, the black walnut. The black walnut has great flavor but also a thick shell (that is a real pain to open) and smaller meats - the reasons you don't see them in stores. Black walnut is adapted to New World soil-borne diseases (oak root fungus, in particular) and so as a rule, English walnut is grafted onto black walnut rootstock in California, in much the same way as vinifera grape varieties are grafted onto New World rootstock for phylloxera resistance. The graft usually makes walnuts easy to identify when you see them from the highway in CA's Central Valley - the rough black walnut bark next to the ground with the smoother English walnut bark above.

On a separate walnut-related subject, when I worked in the area, I used to buy my walnuts from Teri Harvey (actually, her father, I think), owner of the infamous Grandpere Vineyard and also a few walnut trees. There are still some walnut trees in the Shenandoah Valley of Amador County, although not nearly as many as there used to be. Walnuts and lamb used to be the main agricultural products of the area. The sheep have almost disappeared in the face of the grape's profitability and the walnuts are going the same way.

Mark, thanks so much for that explanation--I was actually betting that the English walnut would turn out to be the black walnut, not the other. I had no idea that black walnuts were California natives, either--they're so scarce (and yet so good, what a shame). Of all the farm stands I've stopped at in my life--I can hardly pass one up, and I spent most of my life in California--I've never seen black walnuts for sale.

Jenise, I am not sure if this will hold true where you are, but I find shelled pieces of black walnuts in any grocery/super market. They are right there with the English walnut, pecan etc. usually on the baking needs aisle. If you would like, I can pick up a package and mail them to you.

[Jenise]

Bob, they're strangely absent here on the left coast. They were not widely available in the way you say in Southern California supermarkets when I've looked in the past. Occasionally, good old Trader Joe's would get them around the holidays, but word would get out among the bakers and they'd sell out in a blink. I presume they're not available up here either though I'll confess to not having looked--they've just never been around, so I don't even think to look and I don't generally buy products in that section, preferring the bulk bins. But I do have a little stash at present because a local supermarket went out of biz and bags of black walnuts was one of the items for sale along with the shelves and the forms in their bakery section--so thank you for your offer, but at present, for the first time in my life there are black walnuts in my pantry. When I run out, I'll ring you!

FWIW: black walnuts were traditionally used as a brown wood stain. They're still used today for staining baskets and other items. You can even buy powdered walnut hulls for that use.