Sweet-Sour Green Nuts

Attention - wake-up call! Right now is the time to pick green walnuts and turn them into pickled delights - at least I hope they will be. I’ve always missed this deadline so far, but this year they’re due.

Taking my cue from a recipe by Oskar Marti, I gather 1kg of beautiful green walnuts with the nut shell still soft. I prick them 10 times each with a roulade needle - grueling work, but I persevere to the end. Put on rubber gloves or get brown fingers like in best roll-your-own-smoker days.

The nuts are now covered with water and boil once. Then they steep for 5 minutes. In that time I improvise a marinade - I don’t have all the ingredients the recipe calls for. So I mix 1.1 kg sugar (in my case it’s a mixture of brown and white rock candy - Oskar actually wanted real sugar, which is then caramelized) with 150 ml water (I have) and 400 ml apple cider vinegar (fruit vinegar in the original - so you can let it stand). I boil the mixture and stir until the candy is dissolved, which takes a while. then add some seasoning: one vanilla stick cut in half lengthwise, 2 pieces of stick cinnamon (5 in the original), 1 tablespoon cloves (scarce for me) and one tablespoon dried orange peel (actually lemon, but it’s not in sight here).

I rinse the nuts well with cold water to get rid of the brown colored broth. Now they go into a cylindrical glass bowl and the hot broth goes over them. The nuts float, so I weigh them down with a small pot lid.

Now it is time to wait. After 2 days (i.e. tomorrow), the broth is drained again and heated to boiling. The nuts boil in it for 45 minutes, then they go into canning jars and are poured over with the hot broth that has boiled down for another 20 minutes and then sealed.

How it tastes? Unfortunately, I can only tell you next winter - they should be stored for at least 6 months, Oskar Marti even recommends 15 months if they are served as a side dish with game. I am curious…

pickled green walnuts, farmhouse kitchen, rural ambiente