Bob's Black Walnut Pesto

Foraging is a wonderful way to add a variety of healthy foods to one's diet.  While home for the holidays, my father presented me with foraged eastern black walnuts he had collected from a tree near his home.  My father neatly packaged a portion of the shelled walnuts in a small Tupperware container and labeled the date and location of harvest.

Black walnuts differ considerably from English walnuts.  The first, and most obvious difference, is the thicker shell.  While English walnuts available in most stores for home cracking have thin, easily cracked shells, black walnuts have a thick, dense shell surrounding them. The flavor is also completely different.  Black walnuts are robust, earthy, and have a much stronger flavor than English walnuts.  To read more on black walnuts click here:
http://forestry.ohiodnr.gov/walnut 

When they fall from the tree, black walnuts are encapsulated in a thick, fleshy husk which must be removed before the walnuts within can be properly dried and cracked.  This outer material can be removed by running over the walnuts with a vehicle.  My father remembers my grandfather smashing the husk off in the street of their Flint, Michigan home with a pair of rubber boots.

Once the exterior material is removed and the walnuts have been left to sit for several months to try, a heavy duty hammer is the most commonly used method to crack the walnuts open.  The Lehman's company in Kidron, Ohio, offers one of the only commercially available black walnut crackers:
https://www.lehmans.com/p-1612-hard-shell-nutcracker.aspx 

When considering the possible ways to enjoy the shelled walnuts gifted to me by my father, I chose to make a black walnut pesto, appropriately named Bob's Black Walnut Pesto after the walnuts' harvester.  The robust, earthy gems were pulsed in a food processor with Michigan hydroponic basil, three cloves of garlic, and about 5 tbs of olive oil.  Parmigiana cheese is usually also added to pesto but I chose to forgo this ingredient so my pesto retained a stronger black walnut flavor.

 The resulting pesto was placed in a small jar and covered with a thin film of olive oil.  Stored in the refrigerator, it will be good for a week and has been delicious on bread and in pasta.