Strange foods I have eaten (2)

Occasionally I get cravings for some of the stranger culinary delights that only seem to appear on shop shelves in Britain. I'm not talking about salt and vinegar crisps, which occasionally appear elsewhere. Nor Melton Mowbray pork pies and Wensleydale cheese, because I cannot consider those strange. Nor am I talking about the jellied eels and pickled eggs that you sometimes read about in dewy-eyed descriptions of the pubs of yesteryear, because I never fancied those much. Although I do sometimes get an unhealthy urge for pork scratchings.

But when I travel over to the UK, I usually come back with a jar of pickled walnuts in my bag. We had a walnut tree in the garden when I was a teenager, and the crop one season was big enough to keep us in pickles for years. The walnuts are pickled young and whole, including the outer skin and before the inner shell has formed. For best results, use the finest malt vinegar. Yum!