I posted this clip here on Instagram earlier, and in case you aren’t there or fancy a little extra detail, I thought I’d add more here. It is a recipe to make in the second half of July in the UK, so don’t shilly shally as Edwyn once said.
In Emilio-Romagna, the slice of Italy that runs from Piacenza in the northwest to San Marino in the south east, green walnuts - those picked early, before the shell develops - are used to make a liqueur called Nocino. As you’d hope, families and localities have their own versions of what is essentially a Mediterranean sloe gin, and I have my own which I have been unable to prevent myself christening DiacoNocino.
In Italy, pickled walnuts are picked in early July for this extraordinary drink; this week should be ideal to try this in the UK. Your local park will almost certainly have at least one walnut tree.
Tradition commands that the nearest not-necessarily-legally-produced neat alcohol forms the basis of the brew, along with an uneven number of nuts: I’m not about to stray from the latter but my version substitutes vodka for hootch.
I included a version of this recipe in A Taste of the Unexpected and A Year at Otter Farm and they both won (terrible excuse to mention it KLAXON) Food Book of the Year, so perhaps I should have snuck it into my next book Spice / a cook’s companion too.
To test whether the walnuts are too far developed, take a skewer and push it through the centre; if it makes it out the other side, it’s not too late.
Wear gloves: walnuts are so ridiculously tannic they’ll colour your fingers like you’ve had a lifetime of Woodbines.
29 (or 31) green walnuts
1 litre vodka
500g sugar
1 stick of excellent cinnamon
a good lantern of mace, or 6 filaments
a vanilla pod, split lengthways
zest of 1 lemon, in strips
Wash, dry and quarter the walnuts. In a 3 litre jar, stir the sugar into 1/3 of the vodka to start it dissolving, then add all the other ingredients, stirring to agitate any undiscovered sugar, allowing the walnuts to sink.
As with sloe gin, a few weeks of giving it a daily turn helps the flavours mingle and the sugar dissolve - I keep mine on my desk to remind me: it makes an excellent paperweight.
After that, let it rest for a month, then strain the liquid into a clean bottle. By Christmas, it will have turned into a syrupy, dark, sweet-bitter aromatic liqueur. It is best served cold as a well digger’s ass, at the end of a meal or over (or indeed in) ice cream.
Nocino