Preserved Green Walnuts

Last summer, I spotted a tree on my way home from work sporting pale green balls on its branches.  I picked one and asked a landscape architect friend; he identified the ball as an immature walnut.  The tree was likely a California black walnut, Juglans californica.  (Incidentally, "Juglans" is derived from "Jupiter's balls", as in, the god's manly parts.)  Many months later, I came across a recipe for preserved walnuts, which called for immature, green walnuts.  Although the recommended variety for this recipe is a black walnut, Juglans nigra, or an English walnut, Juglans regia, all varieties of walnuts are edible.  In fact, Native Americans ate California black walnuts as part of their normal diet.  But they offer a very poor meat yield per nut compared to other varieties, and it's difficult to obtain, so it's no surprise they fell out of favor.  But since the whole fruit is used for this recipe and not just the meat, I figured they would work okay.  It would be fun trying, anyway.

Green walnuts are available beginning in June.  Obviously you want as large of a fruit as possible in order to maximize your efforts, but you have to pick them before the shell starts to form under the fleshy outer part.  If you can push a pin through the nut easily, they're still green enough to use.

Green, immature walnuts, about the size of a small plum.

Green walnuts are bitter, so they need to be soaked and/or boiled to remove the bitter taste.  One recipe called for soaking for 9 days, changing the water frequently.  I opted for boiling them several times in fresh changes of water, since I was making only a small batch.

After boiling.  The peeled nuts start to oxidize quickly,
turning a dark green/black, hence their name.

Eventually the nuts are boiled in a spiced sugar syrup, then stored for several weeks to flavor.

Spiced with cinnamon sticks and cardamom seeds.

There is an art to making syrup, and the instructions are vague, so I had a crystallization problem.  I managed to correct most of it, but still ended up with some heavy sugar crystals in the bottom of the jar.  There were also some hard crunchy parts in the walnuts -- I'm not sure if those were also sugar crystals, or parts of shell that were forming early.  They broke up on chewing, so I ate them anyway!

Conclusion:  This was a fun experiment!  The walnuts are delicious, but taste of the spices rather than any distinct nut flavor.  They shrunk considerably while seasoning -- I'm not sure what happened there.  They're excellent with a salty cotija cheese (as in the top photo), or would also be good mixed into plain yogurt.  The syrup could be used endlessly -- on pancakes, in drinks, drizzled on ice cream...

Recipes:  I mostly followed the directions in this recipe from About Greek Food, but I used a lot of the overall information from this site by "livelonger" on Hub Pages.

July ABC Challenge: Strawberry-filled Angel Food Cake FAIL

I really think there's something to that story Like Water for Chocolate, that you transfer a part of yourself into whatever you're making in the kitchen.  This post is a good example of what happens when your heart is off in another room instead of in the kitchen with you.  I couldn't commit myself to making this, mostly because it seemed like more trouble than it was worth.  So when I finally got around to it, I was only going through the motions, somewhat grudgingly.  I wasn't sure I wouldn't rather have been doing something else.  (Mostly, though, it meant another task ahead trying to figure out how to use up the egg yolks.)

To minimize (literally) my concerns, I reduced the recipe to one quarter the size.  Perhaps this was the reason for the poor results. Or perhaps it was because I didn't use cream of tartar.  (While vinegar or lemon juice are suitable substitutes when boiling sugar, I don't think they do a damn thing for egg whites, despite all the advice forums.  But I threw in some vinegar anyway.)  Certainly my pan selection played a part.  I looked at the volume of the whipped whites and chose a larger pan (an 8-inch springform pan with a soda can in the middle) than I had initially anticipated using.  But I didn't count on losing a lot of volume when I added the flour mixture.  And then the cake didn't rise AT ALL.

I think the whites should have been whipped more.  The directions said shaving cream consistency -- that's what I had, at least on top.  But as I folded, I found that the bottom of the bowl was looser than the top.  And then, as the coup de grâce, I forgot to cool it upside-down until I noticed it visibly shrinking in the pan.  So what you have here is an angel food pancake.  Or very fluffy divinity.  (Or a rubber biscuit, heheheh.)

Sad little thing.

I might have used it anyway, filling it like a layer cake, but it was sticky and not cutting nicely.  It just so happened that last night I spotted a mini angel food cake on discount for only $1.19.  Bargain!  I know many cringe at the thought of a commercial angel food cake, but this one had no artificial ingredients! It really wasn't too bad, although sweeter than the one I made.  I decided to employ it as a stand-in. From there, the recipe went off without a hitch.

Here's what I used:

Cake
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup confectioners' sugar (reduced by 2 tablespoons from original)
3 large egg whites
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar (instead of cream of tartar)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1/8 teaspoon salt

Filling
1/2 cup frozen strawberries and raspberries, drained and mashed
1/4 envelope (generous 1/2 teaspoon) unflavored gelatin
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons sugar (double the original recipe)
1/8 teaspoon almond extract (instead of vanilla)

I'm not reprinting the directions here because they're long, and I certainly don't suggest anyone follow my lead.  Best to refer to the King Arthur Flour web site.  I'll note, though, that in addition to reducing the recipe, I made a few other changes...

As far as I can tell, the vinegar had no effect -- the whites whipped up normally but weren't particularly stable.  Many complained that the dessert was too sweet, so I reduced the sugar in the cake (the equivalent of 1/2 cup less than the original.)  I was happy with that choice.  There were also comments that there wasn't much strawberry flavor, so I threw in some raspberries to amp up the flavor a bit.  However, my berries were quite tart, so I had to double the sugar of the filling.  It still was only mildly sweet.  Lastly, I decided to use almond instead of vanilla in the filling, since apparently almond is a traditional flavoring in angel food cake, and I thought it would be more interesting.  That was also a good choice.

Imposter.

Conclusion:  Seriously, this was so not worth the effort.  While not bad at all, and actually a nice choice for a summer dessert, there's simply no "wow" factor.  AFC, store-bought or homemade, is just bland.  And as with others,  I thought the filling lacked flavor and "splash".  The whole ensemble reminded me of the frozen pie my aunt used to make from strawberry yogurt and Cool Whip, only that was a LOT faster and easier.  (Might even have been tastier, too.)  The worst part though, is that because it's bland, there's a tendency to eat MORE -- the exact opposite of what you might do with something like Death By Chocolate.  Speaking of chocolate, I had intended to make an easy warm chocolate ganache to drizzle across the slices, but decided I'd had enough time in the kitchen with this cake.  It could have use it.

Recipe:  Strawberry-filled Angel Food Cake via King Arthur Flour