Homemade Walnut Ice Cream

When I first went to the Alpine region of the Dauphiné–which is the “walnut capital” of France–I had difficulty with the word noix. It means, in general, a “nut”–any nut, of any kind–but in the Dauphiné it also means, quite specifically, the walnut for which that region is famous. A warning: This ice cream can only be made with fresh walnuts, still in their shells, within a few months of the harvest. The secret trick is that the halves of nut-meat must be fresh enough and oily enough