This custard-style ice cream is for devoted black walnut lovers, and wannabe lovers. It gives a double dose of the nut’s unique flavor: First, toasted nuts are ground into a flour and steeped in the cream and milk to impart their flavor, sight unseen; second, at the end of churning, finely chopped toasted black walnuts are mixed in for crunch and another layer of flavor. A few extra steps are involved in making this ice cream—like tempering the egg yolks and reducing the maple syrup—but the results are worth it. Ever since researching the inimitable black walnut for (more…)

Usually, black walnuts are folded into fudge, cakes, pies, ice cream, and other sweets, where their wonderfully pungent and earthy flavor off-sets cloying sweetness, and where sweeteners round out some the nut’s sharper notes.

But, when eaten out of hand, the flavor of black walnuts, America’s own native nut, can be something to get used to, especially to the unschooled palate. In comparison, the familiar flavor of the reserved English walnut is facile; black walnuts require a training regimen. Black walnuts make you earn their respect.

Make this pesto part of your training regimen. Though it’s easy to fall in love with black walnuts when your introduction to them is in a lovingly prepared dessert, this savory treatment is just as irresistible, especially when paired with mushrooms and soba.

If you’re developing a taste for black walnuts, you might start with (more…)

A mature Black Walnut with full summer foliage (Photographed by Jean-Pol Grandmont, 2007)

Some new experiences are best undertaken with a guide: sky diving, rock climbing, foraging for wild mushrooms. Acquiring a taste for the Eastern Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) is another. Don’t go it alone.

The English at Jamestown were blessed to have the Powhatans as culinary guides in a new land, and it is they who likely introduced the colonists to the native black walnut, a nut with more protein than any other tree nut as well as high levels of healthy fats (omega-3 fatty acids and oleic acid), selenium, manganese, and vitamin A. To a starving settler, the extra effort required to hull and shell this unfamiliar nut would have been worth it, to get at the nutritional riches inside.

Black walnuts on the tree in their hulls (Photo courtesy of Hammons)

Today the nutritional value of black walnuts is lost on most of us because most of us consume them in sweets—from ice cream and cakes to fudge, brownies, and pies. If you grew up eating black walnuts, you might think nothing of snacking on them, but you are the rare bird; for many, the assertive flavor black walnut is too strong for nibbling out of hand, regardless of their health benefits.

The first lure that hooked me was black walnut ice cream. I order this flavor whenever I come across it, which is seldom, and the last time I encountered it was probably four or five years ago. Still, no matter how much time would pass between scoops, the memory of (more…)