Getting Pickled!

As we always look for new uses of our great product and as my hobby is organic vegetable gardening, I was delighted to be able to combine both of these this week.

Our walnut tree, after around 15 years of being pretty fruitless and providing a total of 1 walnut, has suddenly got 300 green walnuts quietly ripening unnoticed until a few weeks ago.

Looking at Mrs Beeton and Jane Grigson’s recipes and the Mabey’s book on pickling there is a consensus that Pickled Walnuts are made at this time of the year and they are best made with a strong seasalt brine. If you haven’t had pickled walnuts they are those black succulent pickles that occasionally appear at Christmas and are absolutely delicious with cold meats and ham.

So last night I was able to carry out the first stage of the centuries old recipe that begins ‘Take 100 green walnuts….’ It is now in progress and a gallon of water has been turned into a strong brine, the walnuts have been ‘well pricked’ and they are slowly changing from Green to Black. There is a bit of an obstacle here in that all the recipes are in gallons and pounds but a calculator helps the conversion and I will report progress as the bottling is still a few weeks away. The brine is a bit heavy on the use of sea salt in needing 4 pounds every 3 days for 9 days. This is I admit a bit expensive but it is making me think of producing a specialist product of Pickling brine which would work out a lot cheaper.

I am happy to report that the walnuts have made good progress and have now been bottled. See below the colours turning,...

...the final shiny black colour,...

...and the finished product (including a pretty rustic label!)