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Volume VII, No. 1, Fall 1979 |
COUNTRY MENUS
by Melinda Stewart
To compliment our stories on walnuts, we have devoted this column to recipes using black walnuts.
SUGAR GLAZED WALNUTS
2 1/2 cups black walnuts
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
Place walnuts in shallow pan and heat in moderate oven for about 15 minutes. Mix sugar, cinnamon, salt and water in a sauce pan and cook to the soft ball stage. Remove from heat and add vanilla and nuts. Stir until all nuts are completely coated. Pour onto a greased platter and spread it out.
SWEET POTATO PIE
2 cups cooked and mashed sweet potatoes
5 Tbs. melted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
4 eggs separated
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
dash of mace
1/3 cup chopped walnuts
2 cups milk
1 unbaked pie shell
Combine sweet potatoes, butter and brown sugar. Beat egg yolks and add to mixture with salt, cinnamon and mace.
Mix thoroughly. Mix in walnuts and milk. Beat egg whites stiff and fold in. Pour into pie shell and bake at 425°F. for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to moderately hot 375° and bake 25 minutes more or until firm. Cool. Top with whipped cream if desired. Yield one 9 inch pie.
HOMEMADE WALNUT ICE CREAM
We couldn't find anyone who remembered having black walnut ice cream in the old hand-cranked wooden ice cream freezer, although people remembered banana and peach and other flavors. We think probably the reason was that walnuts were harvested in the fall. By the time ice cream weather came around in the summer, the walnut meats would have been either used up or would have become rancid. Not to be discouraged, with the help of Hazel and Lavern Cravens, we used an old-fashioned no-cook ice cream method from years ago and added walnuts. It was delicious. Here's how we did it.
4 eggs
2 cups sugar
3 Tbs. vanilla
1/2 cup walnuts
11/2 qts. whole raw Jersey milk
(To compensate for this since we no longer have a Jersey cow, we used 2 cups whole
homogenized milk, 1 pint half and half, and 1/2 pint whipping cream)
Beat eggs well. Add sugar, vanilla and enough milk to dissolve the sugar. Put mixture into the metal freezer container and add the rest of the milk, or enough milk to reach the fill line. Put in the paddle, but just before putting on the lid and fastening the can in the wooden ice cream bucket, add the finely chopped nutmeats. We thought maybe they would all sink to the bottom, but they didn't. They were mixed evenly throughout the frozen ice cream. Add chopped ice and about 6 cups of hard rock ice cream salt in layers, completely covering the top of the metal can. Since ice cream won't freeze until the ice melts, to hurry up that process, add about
2 cups water around the ice. Check to see that the drain hole on the side is not stopped up (or the salty water will get into the ice cream.) Turn the crank of the freezer steadily until it becomes too hard to turn. The ice cream can be eaten at this point. Some people like to remove the paddle and pack the ice cream for about an hour to get a firmer product. To do this, drain off the salty water and add more ice and salt to completely cover the top. Cover all with a gunny sack or something similar. This recipe makes one gallon.
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Copyright © 1981 BITTERSWEET, INC.
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