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Adventures in food for the week include continued fussing with green walnuts and green peaches, and making mint chocolate yogurt popsicles.
https://foragerchef.com/cooking-with-green-walnuts/ is a well written overview of possibilities for green walnuts.
I collected the June drop -- walnuts that the tree gave up on -- early in the month, halved the green walnuts and have one quart in brine and another quart soaking and getting rinsed. Alan Bergo says it's not worth fiddling with the June drop, but someone else wrote of the traditional hunt for the nuts barefoot (to find the drop in the high grass). I'll pass on the possibility of finding snakes and spiders with my bare feet, thanks. But before fussing with ladders and struggling to find nuts i can pick, i'll take the June drop. I do cut them in half to make sure they are green all the way through.
The brined walnuts have been steamed and added to a fresh brine today. Apparently that's the "secret" to the commercially made English pickles. What is probably not a secret is that 20% salt is not 2% salt. Fortunately, i figured out the math error before i was too far down the path. I cut it down, and i'll rinse well before i move on to the next step.
Half of the soaking ones need to switch to water with pickling lime. (I remain ... fascinated ... by the people who record their recipes and note that they substituted lime juice.) I think i did the math right there, except the water is very cloudy and the lime has precipitated out. There weren't many places with the walnuts that gave a good ratio so maybe my source was wrong. I'll look at a recipe like this one (also discussion here). (I had the lime to eventually make masa from my popcorn and dent corn.)
To the other half of the soaking walnuts i have added my rock hard dried figs. The water now smells wonderfully aromatic when i pour it off, so a good soak to revivify the figs may also pick up the flavor. Eventually the brined walnuts will be added to a vinegar for pickles. The pickling lime soaked walnuts will be cooked in syrup. And the fig-and-walnut mixture will be mixed with sugar and cooked into a jam.
None of this is turning black nor have my hands been stained black, so i'm assuming these really are too early. One drop i found yesterday (that had been run over and cracked) did seem to have much more of the embryonic walnut formed.
The green peaches i picked at my sister's. The first thought was to make some umeboshi equivalent, but then i found umeboshi are made with ripening plum/apricots, not green. I have one jar of "Maesil Chung or Korean Green Plum Syrup" (but peaches) going, one jar of very very salty brined peaches to ferment, and one jar of 1:1 water vinegar quick pickles in the fridge. Some boring insect had been at her peaches, possibly plum curculio. The peaches i picked with any damage i cut up and those mostly went into the syrup jar.
Finally, my delight: the mint chocolate popsicles. I started with a large bundle of spearmint from the yard, and chopped it up, stem and all. Maybe a cup, two cups packed? I massaged in 1/2 cup of sugar and left to macerate for 30 min or so. I then added 1/2 cup very warm half and half. The foodie recipes advise cream with a yogurt base, i was thinking of our soy milk, but the half and half was there. I let that steep for about half an hour. I suppose if i had not warmed the milk, the mint extract may have stayed green, but with the warm milk, the strained result was a dingy color. So i resorted to antique green food coloring. I can't imagine it gets any less healthy with time, so whatever. This mixture tasted WONDERFUL. Very sweet (but apparently cold reduces the impact of sweetness). Then i mixed in enough of my 0% Fage Greek yogurt to make two cups -- the volume of my six popsicle container. I poured in the blend, paused to add chips and/or chocolate syrup, then continued.
Today, ahhh! Just wonderful. The tart yogurt, the refreshing mint, and the studs of chocolate. The chocolate is the least ideal of all the parts. I might just leave it out next time. The chips are hard, and i think too much syrup would lead to structural failure. Little fudgy bits would stay softer, i think.
Ah:
* https://food52.com/blog/13140-why-the-chocolate-chunks-in-your-ice-cream-are-gritty-how-to-fix-it
* https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-make-chocolate-chips-swirls-ice-cream-mix-ins
Good to know if i make this for other people. The mint by itself is wonderful to me.
https://foragerchef.com/cooking-with-green-walnuts/ is a well written overview of possibilities for green walnuts.
I collected the June drop -- walnuts that the tree gave up on -- early in the month, halved the green walnuts and have one quart in brine and another quart soaking and getting rinsed. Alan Bergo says it's not worth fiddling with the June drop, but someone else wrote of the traditional hunt for the nuts barefoot (to find the drop in the high grass). I'll pass on the possibility of finding snakes and spiders with my bare feet, thanks. But before fussing with ladders and struggling to find nuts i can pick, i'll take the June drop. I do cut them in half to make sure they are green all the way through.
The brined walnuts have been steamed and added to a fresh brine today. Apparently that's the "secret" to the commercially made English pickles. What is probably not a secret is that 20% salt is not 2% salt. Fortunately, i figured out the math error before i was too far down the path. I cut it down, and i'll rinse well before i move on to the next step.
Half of the soaking ones need to switch to water with pickling lime. (I remain ... fascinated ... by the people who record their recipes and note that they substituted lime juice.) I think i did the math right there, except the water is very cloudy and the lime has precipitated out. There weren't many places with the walnuts that gave a good ratio so maybe my source was wrong. I'll look at a recipe like this one (also discussion here). (I had the lime to eventually make masa from my popcorn and dent corn.)
To the other half of the soaking walnuts i have added my rock hard dried figs. The water now smells wonderfully aromatic when i pour it off, so a good soak to revivify the figs may also pick up the flavor. Eventually the brined walnuts will be added to a vinegar for pickles. The pickling lime soaked walnuts will be cooked in syrup. And the fig-and-walnut mixture will be mixed with sugar and cooked into a jam.
None of this is turning black nor have my hands been stained black, so i'm assuming these really are too early. One drop i found yesterday (that had been run over and cracked) did seem to have much more of the embryonic walnut formed.
The green peaches i picked at my sister's. The first thought was to make some umeboshi equivalent, but then i found umeboshi are made with ripening plum/apricots, not green. I have one jar of "Maesil Chung or Korean Green Plum Syrup" (but peaches) going, one jar of very very salty brined peaches to ferment, and one jar of 1:1 water vinegar quick pickles in the fridge. Some boring insect had been at her peaches, possibly plum curculio. The peaches i picked with any damage i cut up and those mostly went into the syrup jar.
Finally, my delight: the mint chocolate popsicles. I started with a large bundle of spearmint from the yard, and chopped it up, stem and all. Maybe a cup, two cups packed? I massaged in 1/2 cup of sugar and left to macerate for 30 min or so. I then added 1/2 cup very warm half and half. The foodie recipes advise cream with a yogurt base, i was thinking of our soy milk, but the half and half was there. I let that steep for about half an hour. I suppose if i had not warmed the milk, the mint extract may have stayed green, but with the warm milk, the strained result was a dingy color. So i resorted to antique green food coloring. I can't imagine it gets any less healthy with time, so whatever. This mixture tasted WONDERFUL. Very sweet (but apparently cold reduces the impact of sweetness). Then i mixed in enough of my 0% Fage Greek yogurt to make two cups -- the volume of my six popsicle container. I poured in the blend, paused to add chips and/or chocolate syrup, then continued.
Today, ahhh! Just wonderful. The tart yogurt, the refreshing mint, and the studs of chocolate. The chocolate is the least ideal of all the parts. I might just leave it out next time. The chips are hard, and i think too much syrup would lead to structural failure. Little fudgy bits would stay softer, i think.
Ah:
* https://food52.com/blog/13140-why-the-chocolate-chunks-in-your-ice-cream-are-gritty-how-to-fix-it
* https://www.seriouseats.com/how-to-make-chocolate-chips-swirls-ice-cream-mix-ins
Good to know if i make this for other people. The mint by itself is wonderful to me.
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Substituting lime juice for pickling lime, omg. Next they'll be flinging in Lime cycles.
Curiosity: Have you read Kate Lebo on umeboshi?
What does "not worth fiddling with" mean? Too scanty, too fussy to prepare, something like that?
He says, "While it can be tempting, don't harvest green nuts directly from the ground- those have been rejected by the tree and are not good for eating." I do not believe the rejection means they aren't good to eat. Because there's drought or because too many were pollinated than can be supported doesn't mean they are flawed. I cut them in half to make sure they look OK. Some seem to have brown ... shell? forming. Those i discard. The others look to me to be not so different than the few i can easily reach to pick -- just smaller. So, i'm using the June drop.
Re:
What Lebo says about umeboshi is also in The Book of Difficult Fruits-- in my view, one of the best essays.