Black Walnut Maple Sauce
Prior to COVID-19, Andy and his partner Nora hosted What Got Gathered dinners in a friend’s backyard and at Common Ground in Middleton. One dessert brought tears to Andy’s eyes: toasted black walnuts in syrup. Try it on ice cream, or—even better—on cheesecake, with blueberries or wild berries of any kind on top. It may bring tears to your eyes too.
Ingredients
1 cup chopped black walnuts
1 cup maple syrup
4 tablespoons butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Directions
Toast walnuts in a dry cast-iron skillet, stirring very often so they don’t burn, until they turn a shade darker and smell good. Remove from pan.
Bring syrup and butter to a boil in a small saucepan. Add salt and walnuts and stir. Boil for a few minutes, stirring frequently, until the sauce thickens a little. Remove from heat and stir in vanilla. Serve immediately, or store in a glass container in the fridge.
Suggestions
Adjust quantity and proportions to your needs and taste.
Black walnuts have an amazing, intense flavor. Not everyone loves them, but we adore them for their rich flavor, tinged with blueberry. They’re leagues above the English walnuts you can buy at the store—and they’re all around us. You can often find small caches the squirrels haven’t entirely devoured at the end of the winter, just as we come into maple syrup season.
We hull our wild walnuts by rolling them around on a hard, flat surface under our boots. Then we wash them to get as much gunky stuff off the shells as possible, before letting them dry in a squirrel-safe spot for at least a couple of weeks. We have found the best and speediest method for getting the nuts out is just to whack them a handful of times with a claw hammer, not worrying too much about trying to get whole halves and quarters—just make sure no tiny bits of shell get in there. Twenty or thirty minutes of cracking should give you enough for a recipe—or you can order them, already processed, online, from local sources.
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