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the amory park dispatch: November 27, 2006
Nocino Time!
After dinner, Pierguido's father brought his homemade nocino from the freezer: the liqueur was dark, thick, and cold, the aroma of clove and anise still heady and warm. I must have been suitably impressed and appreciative: as we left the apartment, our tummies happy and full of Pierguido's mother's cooking, I was presented with a parting gift of the luscious digestif, poured into an Orangina bottle and carefully wrapped in cellophane and paper.
JB and I rationed the little bottle over the next 9 months, allowing special guests to sample the liqueur at select dinner parties. We polished it off at the house party we threw to celebrate the Summer Solstice and our wedding.
Nocino was one of the several culinary epiphanies I experienced on our trip to Italy last fall – fiore di zucca being another – and upon returning to the States, I was determined to make my own. I passed over several artful bottles with handmade labels in a tiny enoteca at Lake Maggiore to ensure that if I wanted nocino again, I was obliged to make it myself.
Upon our return from Italy, I set about locating a supplier of green walnuts, and mid June, two boxes of lovely, smooth, green walnuts arrived from Haag Walnut Farm in California.
I guessed the amount of walnuts I would need for the nocino, so I ordered 15 pounds. Mr. Haag generously included an extra five pounds with my order. I used almost one box for the nocino (30 walnuts), and decided to make jam with the remainder.
Nocino is made from entire walnuts – skin, shell, and all – quartered, and left to macerate for weeks in grain alcohol. Cinnamon, anise, clove and other spices are added and then it's stored for another month before being cooked down with sugar and dry red wine. The liqueur is then strained into bottles for at least another month of mellowing – my yield was approximately five litres. The flavour grows more exquisite with time. I bottled the liqueur in August, and we planned to sample it in late fall.
On Thanksgiving morning, JB announced it was time: the nocino it was thick and walnutty sweet. I added a few more cloves and a cinnamon stick to the flask and put it in the freezer. We sampled the nocino again that evening after our feast with the neighbours, and it was just as I remembered.
I'm currently designing labels, and bottles will be given as gifts at holiday time. I might just send a sample to Pierguido's father – sneak his Orangina bottle back to him through the post...
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I should mention that I found two perfect sturdy glass gallon jugs at Food City for $6 each. Of course, they were still full of Trappey's Louisiana Hot Sauce, but my only other option was an $8 chintzy sun tea jar with bogus printed daisies and a wiggly spigot. My kitchen sink drains much faster since I dumped two gallons of hot sauce down the pipes.
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Now, making the walnut jam was not so simple, and finding a recipe was fruitless. Apparently, Armenians adore walnut preserves, but the recipes I found online were either vague or unappealing to my tastes (whole shriveled blackened walnuts, steeped in syrup).
I knew the French must make walnut jam, and sure enough I soon found a description – but no recipe – of Confiture de Noix de Perigord from Chocolate & Zucchini, a delightful journal about food.
Given the basics of 55% sugar to 45% walnuts, I decided to wing it, and below is the recipe I came up with.
Know that this is not a quick process, and could be quite costly. It might take the better part of a day (it took me several weekday evenings), and unless you have a walnut tree at your disposal, fresh green walnuts run about $4.75/pound, shipped to you. However, this is decadent and unusual jam and worth the effort. JB sat at the kitchen table, moaning, as he ate the warm jam with butter cookies.
Molly's Walnut Jam
Yield: 6 half pint jars
Tools:
Stockpot
2-quart saucepan
blender
paring knife
6 half pint jam jars and lids, sterilized with boiling water
Ingredients:
1 quart young walnut meats (start with approximately 10 pounds raw green walnuts, with the shell and skin intact)
5 cups turbinado, or raw cane sugar
2 cups water
1 cup Nocello (walnut liqueur, you could substitute hazelnut flavoured syrup)
6 or so whole cloves
2 Tbsp vanilla
splash lemon juice
Place the whole green walnuts – still in their skin and shell – in the stockpot and cover with water. Bring to a full rolling boil, and continue to boil for a good hour, or until the outer green skin turns black and soft. Let the walnuts cool and soak in their own cooking water for several hours, then drain. If you are ambitious, you could use the burnt umber-coloured cooking water as a dye. (Be careful draining the pot – any fabric splashed will be stained.)
Wearing rubber gloves, remove the skin from the walnuts – this is best done by squishing and rubbing the walnuts between your hands. Kids would love this task: it's messy. Walnut juices will stain your fingers and fingernails brown for days – be sure to wear the gloves if you don't want this to happen.
Once the walnuts are skinned, pop open the shells along their seams with a small paring knife. Scoop out the nutmeats with the knife, or your finger. Pull everything out – the brain-like nutmeat and the pithy separations.
Put the nutmeats and separations into the blender and grind to a pebbly consistency. My old Osterizer has two settings: lo and hi; I used lo.The blended nutmeats will be a light brown colour.
Combine the nutmeats, liquids, vanilla, sugar, and cloves in a 2-quart saucepan. Bring to a full boil, and maintain the heat for close to an hour, or until the jam reaches the consistency you prefer. Stir occasionally. It should feel tacky, and gel when drizzled onto a cool surface. The jam is a dark umber colour.
Pour into sterilized jam jars, cap, and ideally let sit for a day or two before enjoying.
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