RIVER TERRACE WALNUT BUTTER

In the oven, roast about 500g of shelled walnuts for 7 to 10 mins at 150oC. You just want to warm them a little – not burn them. Make sure you haven’t included rancid nuts. Roast till the skin on the nuts just starts to crack.

Pick over again to remove any shell, or rancid-looking ones.

Grate them while still hot, using the finest attachment on a kitchen whiz grater. You don’t want to break your grater so put a handful of nuts in at a time and let them bounce around and slowly grate under their own weight. You may need to put something on the top to stop the nuts bouncing back out.

After grating, put the blade on whiz and add about 1 cup finely grated walnut and about to cup of rice bran oil. Keep whizzing for about 3 minutes, then slowly add, 1 cup at a time, the finely grated walnut.

Keep going till the whole lot is added, whizzing between each addition to get the oils out of the recently added nuts. (You can use the same method for almond, hazel and macadamia butters.)

Have the walnut butter on toast for breakfast, on your salad sandwich for lunch instead of butter, and on crackers with cheese as a snack or even as a dip for fresh vege sticks.

This recipe comes from Karen Johnston of River Terrace Nurseries in Nelson, which sell a range of grafted walnut trees and, in my experience, have superior quality trees.