Black Is Back

During all the years of baking holiday cookies and cakes while growing up in Virginia (1958 to 1971), we often used black walnuts in recipes calling for walnuts instead of the mildly sweet “English” walnuts. English walnuts were for eating and for salads (Waldorf and jellied cranberry in particular).

This could be the secret of Michelle Huneven’s dissatisfaction with the cookie recipes she has tried (“A Spicy Dream,” Dec. 14) that came close to her mother’s cookies but were not quite right. The difference in flavor between black and English walnuts is profound.

After moving to Arizona when I married in 1971, and then to California in 1976, I realized that black walnuts were almost unknown on the West Coast. When I could find them they were available only in tiny bags that cost a fortune, often packaged by Azara. Also, new recipes never specified black walnuts or English walnuts. It was almost as if black walnuts didn’t exist.

The only explanation I could figure was that the huge, hundreds-years-old black walnut trees that grew wild on the East Coast were made practically extinct by age, disease and logging; these trees are also valued for their beautiful wood.

As I remember, black walnut trees also grow much slower and larger than the trees that produce English walnuts, which are widely cultivated in the San Joaquin Valley, where my husband was born and raised and where several members of his family have grown almonds and walnuts for years.

Imagine my surprise when this month I found a large (8-ounce) bag of black walnuts in the Lucky store on Newport Boulevard in Tustin--almost 25 years after leaving Virginia. They are packaged by Hammons Products Co. of Stockton, Mo. Even the package labels them “Eastern black walnuts,” with the enticing teaser, “Savor the rich, distinctive flavor.” Well said.

But I fear people will be turned off if they try to eat them “as is.” These are not really “eating nuts,” but you can’t beat them for baking.

I urge Huneven to try them in her Heirloom walnut icebox cookies. I’ll bet they bring her much closer to the cookies she remembers from her childhood. And with the proper marketing and advertising, black walnuts could become the trendy new flavor of the ‘90s.

--CATHERINE C. CATE

Tustin