Peeled Walnuts: Awesome, Really
Peeling a fresh walnut
What a thing of beauty. Here’s a fresh walnut, just out of the shell, its white flesh gleaming like moonlight, and the bit of skin I have peeled back waving to the right of the nut. Another couple of days and it would be impossible to peel this walnut, the skin stuck to the nut like glue.
Walnuts are just coming in to Mexican markets right now, or at least in to the up market markets. This little handful, helpfully cracked by the vendor by holding the walnut in her left hand and tapping it with a sharp little hammer, cost $2.
Nogales or nuez de castilla (castilian or Spanish nut) are not indigenous to Mexico. They came with the Spanish. But they unleashed in New Spain, as Mexico was called, the most wonderful of sauces, fresh nuts pounded with crema (creme fraiche) to make a superlative sauce.
And this gives me shivers because I think the same sauce, minus the crema, was made in Ancient Rome. And that at some point in the Old World it was combined with yoghurt. And then it came to Mexico.
Normally, I’m arguing for recent origins for most of our favorite dishes. Not this one. I think kitchen workers in Rome around 100 AD were peeling walnuts.
Lost in Europe, the nogada sauces continue triumphantly in Mexico. Now doesn’t that merit the overworked term “awesome.”
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Wonderful Rachel, made me think of all the nogadas i have seen.
you know that very traditional “Nogadas’ are made with just water, sometimes added with a small piece of goat cheese or othe quesos rancheros depending on area, and some times they are made with a dash of cream. my beloved and begone Friend Guadalupe Perez San Vicente, recognized food historian, actually accepted the Nogadas made with Pecans! as traditional and she said that both, the ones made with peeled walnuts and the ones made with pecans and Vino de Xerez neede to be considered as traditional. what do you think? some of my friend are OK with this theory but some are definitely not! as you would imagine!
I am ok with it.
Roberto
Roberto, You know Mexican food from the inside, not like me, a foreigner crashing around. Would I be right that the more crema in a nogada sauce, the more commercial/downmarket?
I wish I had had the chance to meet Guadalupe Perez San Vicente. What a contribution she made. But here’s my guess.
A ground nut sauce came with the Conquest. Maybe there was a pre-hispanic equivalent but I’d need evidence. Even in Europe, you could use new walnts (this has to have been seasonal), almonds (not seasonal), or perhaps hazel nuts. It goes way, way back, I think.
Here it could have been adapted to nuez criollo–pecans. Why not? And for all the talk that vino de xerez had to be imported, there’s a very interesting thesis showing it was produced in central north Mexico–haven’t been able to get the book, you know how it is.
So why now a local nuez criollo version even with Mexico-produced vino de xerez?
A practical question? How were the nuts prepared? Small metate? chopping? molcajete? I think this is essential to the story?
Perhaps it was covered in another post. Any idea if nogada sauces are related to white gazpacho?
I lack the patience to peel walnuts. But we have a friend/neighbor who doesn’t mind doing so. But she also is patient enough hand weave superb baskets of long, Michoacán pine needles.
She and her husband also love chiles en nogada, a dish of which I am not a fan. But I’ll admit that hers are pretty good.
Saludos,
Mike
Hi Michael, it’s a huge amount of work. And I think chiles en nogada belongs to such a different tradition that it is hard for outsiders to appreciate.