Addendum on the Texture

I woke up this morning thinking about the texture of the pickled walnuts, where you're eating all parts of the walnut fruit: the nutmeat inside, the immature nut, and the outer hull.

I was thinking that I should have said more in that last post about the texture, but I was having difficulty describing it. Then I figured it out and did a little checking this morning to make sure I was right.

The texture is rather grainy or gritty, and that's almost all due to a particular kind of cell in the hull. The texture is caused by "stone cells."

If you've eaten pears and quinces, this texture will be familiar to you, because it's the same thing. In botany classes, pears are the fruits the teacher commonly uses as "Exhibit A" for this cell type.

I hope I'm describing this perfectly accurately; my botany's sadly rusty. Stone cells are a type of sclerenchyma cell. (Here's how I learned to say it: "Sklair-IN-kah-mah.") Sclerenchyma cells are plant cells that develop a tough layer of lignin inside the cell wall; so tough and thick that the cell inside usually dies once the cell matures, because the layer is so heavy that nutrients and waste products can't get in or out.

Elongated sclerenchyma cells are the ones that end up in supportive roles, as in a tree trunk. You can also think about jute, hemp, flax, and other plant fibers that hold up well.

In the case of stone cells, instead of being elongated into woody fibers, the cells form as roundish little blobs, like cobbles, and apparently function in fruits in a protective role, holding off frugivory until the plant is good and ready for its seeds to be dispersed. (If you've tried to eat an unripe pear, you know what I mean.) Now imagine a caterpillar trying to swallow one of these little cobbles.

Stone cells come to their full glory as the walnut shell, the peach pit, the apple seed, the cherry stone, where the tender plant embryo is guarded from an herbivore's teeth and digestive tract even as the young new plant is dispersed away from its parent tree.

Anyway, "stone cells" explains the texture of the walnut hull; it has the same kind of grittiness as a pear or quince, and for good reason.

And I thought you might like a little botany lesson.

Pickled Walnuts

I’ve been working up to this post in some of my previous posts (“Walnut Catsup,” “Ketchup and Vinegar,” and some notes about the progress of our own walnuts). I hope you’ll bear with this fairly long entry, given that blog entries are “supposed” to be quick little “thots” only 800 words long. Don’t worry, I’m breaking it up with pictures.

So: remember that 1880s recipe I gave you in the post for Walnut Catsup—apparently pickled walnuts, which could be ground up into a paste? Well, it turns out that one small, family-run company here in Missouri makes the pickled walnuts for you. So you can try it first without going to all the hassle of picking, pickling, and processing the nuts yourself.

The company is called Barnicle Farms—it’s Tony and Lorraine Barnicle, down in Mary’s Home, Missouri. They have a Web site, so you can learn more and order your own pickled walnuts. Easy to remember: http://www.barniclefarms.com/.

Their story is pretty simple—they were visiting friends in London in 1981 and had some pickled walnuts there. Pickled walnuts are an English tradition; Evelyn Waugh and Charles Dickens, for instance, mentioned the food in their writings (the Barnicles quote the passages in their promotional literature).

Of course, the walnuts that the Barnicles ate in England were English walnuts, a.k.a. Persian walnuts, the kind labeled here in America as just “walnuts.” But the type that Missouri is so famous for is the black walnut, whose nutmeats have a much richer, stronger, darker flavor. So the Barnicles did their homework, experimented with traditional recipes, and pioneered the process of pickling Missouri’s black walnuts.

As of 2003, they were approved by the USDA and received certification with the Agri-Missouri program of the Missouri Department of Agriculture. They’ve appeared at the annual Walnut Festival held down at Stockton. You can find their product increasingly throughout the state.

Of course . . . the moment of truth is when you taste the pickled walnuts! Realize: if you’ve grown up around black walnut trees, you’re going to have a deeply ingrained idea that all parts of the walnut tree, except the true nutmeats, are decidedly inedible. Or at least kinda gross.

Remember, black walnuts give off juglone, a respiratory inhibitor (to plants) that keeps other plants (such as tomatoes) from thriving near a walnut tree. As a kid, I simply came to the conclusion that walnut trees must be kinda toxic.

All the green parts of the tree smell funky, and the new growth of shoots and leaves can be sticky and resinous. If you have a walnut sprouting up in your flower bed (thanks to the squirrels) and pull it out with your hands, you’ll smell the walnut juice immediately.

The green husks that surround the shell give off a sap that stains everything it touches dark brown. As a kid I usually had brown hands and knees in the autumn from playing in the backyard under the walnut tree.

So the idea of eating one of these little suckers whole is bizarre, to say the least. But here is my verdict, in a nutshell (pardon the pun): Very good, when combined with other foods, but probably not something you’d want to eat by itself.

They are very pickled-tasting, sour and sweet and funky. For some reason I cannot name the flavor that predominates, though it tastes familiar to me. Is it alum? Is it mace, or cloves? Sue says she thinks it is the flavor of the actual walnut juice. Hmmm.

So they are pretty strong, and they have a grainy texture, which I think comes from the green hull (it all turns black once pickled). I personally wouldn’t want to eat a whole one. Slice it first.

In England, pickled walnuts are often eaten as part of a cheese and cold-cut/sausage tray. I think the nuts are generally sliced when served this way. I would imagine that the cheese tray could naturally contain some traditional British cheeses—cheddar, stilton, and so on. I’ve tried the walnuts with sharp cheddar, and the combination is terrific.

The pickled walnuts are also supposed to be good with roasted or grilled meats (Dickens’s character asks for “a mutton chop and a pickled walnut”). I can see where you could grind up the pickled walnuts, mix it with some of the juice, and make a kind of relish out of it. A “catsup,” if you will. I’ll bet that the dark sharp bite of the walnuts gives some excellent zip to steaming meat. You can also marinate a roast in the pickled walnuts. Look for this as the “next thing” at highfalutin big-city restaurants.

The Barnicles suggest grinding the pickled walnuts and using them “in a dip, in a salad dressing or sprinkled on a salad,” adding that they are also “great with eggs and egg dishes. Sprinkle ground nut in deviled egg mixture and add some on top before serving.”

I would suggest that they are an excellent gift and something to start a conversation over. Of course, I am supporting our local made-in-Missouri products, but you can also tell that I’m sort of a “foodie,” and I find this a wonderful new flavor to play around with.

By the way, they’re not exactly cheap: Down at Columbia’s Root Cellar, they sell for six seventy-five for an eight-ounce jar. But if you stop and review the complicated process for preparing these little suckers, you’ll understand why the Barnicles sell them for so much.

And once you’ve tasted them, you might find yourself with a brand new little addiction. In fact, you might even start doing things that really piss off the local squirrels.

Photo comments. Throughout this post, the photos show the pickled walnuts, whole, cross-sectioned, and sliced and served on crackers. The pickled walnuts are the black ones.

I’ve also included pictures of some fresh walnuts from our tree, taken last night, with the good ol’ Missouri quarter to show how they’ve grown since last time. The fresh walnuts are green. Some pictures show fresh and pickled walnuts together, with cross-sectioning. They are about the same size; I’ll bet the Barnicles are down there in Mary’s Home right now harvesting the same-size immature walnuts for their pickles. I’ll bet their squirrels hate them.

The picture of the “hatpin-through-the-walnut trick” is to show you that our walnuts are indeed still at pickling stage: The shell inside isn’t yet hard enough to prevent the pin from penetrating.

The photo of the jars on the shelf was taken at Columbia’s own Root Cellar, purveyor of Missouri-grown, farm-fresh produce, meat, bread, and milk (814A East Broadway): local, local, local! They were kind enough to let me take pictures in their shop: Thanks a lot!

Walnut Catsup

Building on the subject of the last post, I wanted to talk again about the old tome The Hearthstone; or, Life at Home: A Household Manual, by Laura C. Holloway, published in 1883. Google has the entire book available online, here.

You might remember me making fun of this book’s “Toast and Water” recipe some weeks ago. Turns out some retro recipes deserve to recede into dim history!

But we were talking about ketchup, or catsup, as some would spell it. (Editor’s note: Webster’s 11th Collegiate has ketchup as the first spelling, followed by catchup and catsup in that order, so among U.S. editors, ketchup would almost always be the preferred spelling. Unless you have a good reason to prefer one of the alternate spellings . . . such as when you’re quoting from an 1880s cookbook that spells it catsup throughout and don’t want to annoy your reader by switching back and forth a lot . . .)

So, there are a lot of catsup recipes in Holloway’s book, beginning on page 508, in a section called “Pickles and Catsups.” Here’s a list of the recipes in that section:

--To Pickle Lemons with the Peel on.
--To Pickle Lemons without the Peel.
--Knickerbocker Pickle [“for beef, mutton and pork”; recipe makes one hundred pounds of pickled meat].
--To Pickle Green Tomatoes.
--To Pickle Red Tomatoes.
--Indian or Yellow Pickle (Mrs. Reynolds’ recipe).
--Mangoes. [Not what you think! It is muskmelons stuffed “with mustard-seed, allspice, horseradish, small onions, etc., and sewed up” and pickled.]
--Mushrooms.
--Onion and Cucumber Pickles.
--To Pickle Gherkins.
--Nasturtiums.
--Pickled Grapes.
--To Pickle Peaches [3 different recipes for these].
--Pickled Peppers.
--Pickled Onions.
--Spanish Onions—Pickled.
--Pickled Plums [2 versions].
--East India Pickle [What the hey? It’s cabbage, onions, horseradish, green peppers, vinegar, mace, cloves, allspice, cinnamon, alum, and salt.]
--English Pickles.
--To Pickle Eggs.
--Universal Pickle.
--A Tennessee Recipe for Tomato Catsup (1) [I think Holloway was from Tennessee; no wonder she lists it first].
--Tomato Catsup (2).
--Tomato Catsup (3) (Mrs. Reynolds’ recipe).
--Tomato Catsup (4) [Yes! Four different recipes for tomato catsup! Glory!].
--Cucumber Catsup.
--Walnut Catsup.
--To Make Curry Powder.

. . . So, are we scared yet, or intrigued? My home-canning skills are pretty minimal, so if I attempted to put up any of these, you should be very afraid. But I think it would nifty if a skilled home-canner explored some of these recipes and used modern (trustworthy) canning materials and techniques to produce some recipes from history.

For fun, and because I’ll be talking more along these lines shortly, here is Holloway’s recipe for Walnut Catsup, found on pages 515–14 of her book. No, there are no paragraph breaks. (Her book was going to be long enough as it was, huh?)

Walnut Catsup.—One hundred walnuts, one handful of salt, one quart of vinegar, one-quarter of an ounce of mace, one-quarter of an ounce of cloves, one-quarter of an ounce of ginger, one-quarter of an ounce of whole black pepper, a small piece of horseradish, twenty shallots, one-quarter of a pound of anchovies, one pint of port wine; procure the walnuts at a time when you can run a pin through them; slightly bruise, and put them into a jar with the salt and vinegar; let them stand eight days, stirring every day; then drain the liquor from them and boil it, with the above ingredients, for about half an hour; it may be strained or not, as preferred, and, if required, a little more vinegar or wine can be added, according to taste. When bottled well, seal the corks.

Poking a pin through the walnut is the way to tell if the nut inside is still soft enough to be pickled and eaten; if the pin can’t penetrate, then the shells have formed too hard inside. Which, truth be told, would be sometime in June for around these parts, if I gauge correctly.

Interesting how she says you can either strain it or leave them whole. Wild, huh?

Well, more on this subject later . . .

FOR MORE INFO, LOOK AT MY POST ON PICKLED WALNUTS.