Mark Diacono

Walnuts

Appears in
A Taste of the Unexpected
A Taste of the Unexpected

By Mark Diacono

Published 2010

  • About

For most of us the festive season is the start and end of our relationship with walnuts. It’s a shame — good as they can be, these dried walnuts are incomparable with your own, homegrown fresh walnuts. And if you grow your own tree you’ll have three chances of a crop.

The walnuts most of us buy are picked in autumn and dried for sale. The drying process gives them a long shelf life (try a bag of Christmas ‘special’ nuts at Easter and you’ll see what I mean - it’ll still be perfectly fine) but it does rob them of some of their texture and subtlety.