Fruit and Nuts

Fresh walnuts are an early autumn treat, with a mild, creamy flavour and crisp, moist texture. Crack them open like ordinary walnuts, then peel off the bitter, inner brown skins from the kernels. This is a fiddly process, well suited to the end of long, relaxed meals. Fresh walnuts go well with muscat-flavoured grapes, such as some of the intensely sweet Italia variety around at the moment (the yellower the sweeter).

Mediterranean pomegranates, also in season now, present other problems to the eater. Having cut or broken them into quarters, should you just bite in and risk decimating your tastebuds on the bitter yellow pith partitions between the clusters of jewel-like seeds? I cop out by simply squeezing the halved fruit like an orange and drinking the sour/sweet nectar.