Pickled Walnuts

This is a June job. The whole thing turns on it. Green walnuts have to be picked before the shell hardens inside, which gives you a window of about a fortnight in early summer and not a day longer. Push a needle through one. If it goes through cleanly, you're in time. If it doesn't, you've missed it for the year and there's nothing to be done except mark the calendar for next June.

I walk past a walnut tree on my way to the market. Most of the year I don't think about it, but in early June I start watching. The nuts come on like green plums, fuzzy and soft, and there's a brief moment when they're exactly right. I pick a kilogram, no more, because that's all the brining bucket will hold, and because pickled walnuts are not something you eat by the handful. They're for cheese in November. They're for cold ham at Boxing Day lunch. A small jar lasts a long time.

The process is unhurried and a bit alchemical. Two weeks in salt water to draw out the bitterness. A day in the sun to blacken. Then a hot bath of spiced malt vinegar and dark sugar, and into the cupboard for two months at the very least. There's no shortcut. A pickled walnut hurried is a pickled walnut wasted.

I wrote the dates in the notebook the first year I made these: "Picked 18 June. Jarred 4 July. Open 4 September." I still write them down every time. There's something satisfying about a recipe that asks you to think six months ahead, to set something aside for a self you haven't met yet, the one who'll be standing at the cheese cupboard on a dark evening looking for something to make the cheddar sing.