Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Grabbing Nuts

Last year, for the first time, I made a batch of nocino, a liqueur made from unripe walnuts. I'm not exactly convinced that last year's batch was all that great (I think I used too many cloves), but my mom liked the stuff. This year, I'm going to make another batch, with fewer cloves and perhaps more vanilla, maybe a couple of coffee beans.

Anyway, today I stopped by the job early so I could gather some of the black walnuts from the two large walnut trees onsite. When I got to work, I shocked my co-worker by telling him, "I'm here to grab some nuts." Poor guy was the only other person present, so I think he was sweating a bit until I explained that I'd be harvesting some walnuts to make a liqueur. He was less perturbed when I returned with two bags of walnuts and asked, "Can you smell my nuts from where you're sitting?" Unripe walnut fruits have a pretty strong, almost citrusy, aroma.

I adapted my first batch of nocino from this recipe, but this time I think I'll halve the clove content and add a couple of coffee beans to the mix. Last year's experiment wasn't a complete success, but a promising start. The limoncello, in contrast, has always been a huge success, right from the start, and I have two gallons of the stuff just waiting to be bottled.

3 comments:

Chickpea said...

Sounds lush, I think I need to go grab me some nuts :)

ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© said...

I never ended up using all the ones I cleaned with my patented 'run them over in the gravel driveway' method.

They went back to Nutkin...
~

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Sounds lush, I think I need to go grab me some nuts :)

If you can grab some for free, it's an interesting liqueur.

I never ended up using all the ones I cleaned with my patented 'run them over in the gravel driveway' method.

The problem with the black walnuts is that you need a special heavy-duty nutcracker to open them up- running them over with the car just makes them laugh. Pick some now, before the shell has formed, and you can even pickle them. Why let Nutkin have all the fun?