Guilt leads to pistachios - and pasta

It's a long time since I've done a lucky dip. I had one sitting on my desk - Charmaine Solomon's Encyclopedia of Asian Food was the book - and that was OK. But then the page I turned to was one of various lentil recipes, and even though I tried, several times, to whip up some enthusiasm, to think some intelligent thoughts, I just could not think of anything to say really. Which, in some ways, is an indication of how much the food world has changed since I was young. Back then I would have been excited by the thought of red lentils in coconut milk. Today and since I chose the book, I was just bored.

I even tried to do something based on the book itself and the introduction, but I could not grab hold of anything there either - other than to repeat how our eating habits have changed. So, for the very first time I decided to return the book to the shelf - riddled with guilt.

But readers it didn't quite end there, for the book that David chose for me Jamie Cooks Italy, which I thought was a better bet, turned out to not be so, for this was the recipe I turned to - Asparagus linguine. What's wrong with that you might say, and really you are perfectly right, particularly because I do have some asparagus in the fridge which really must be used. However, today, at least, it just induced a big yawn of boredom, and so I turned the page back - no two pages back because I was also a bit bored with Tortiglioni - which is pasta with peas, guanciale, mint and pecorino. And one more page led me to my chosen dish for the day - Pistachio pasta, which sort of struck a chord because I vaguely remember reading something about pistachios recently, and indeed I did and will come to that. But at last something that I can have a go at.

So it seems I have turned a corner in breaking my own rules of the lucky dip - pick a book at random, pick a page, and no matter what, write something about it. Has rot set in, or can I survive this and return to a rigid adherence to my rules? Because that's the thing with breaking a rule isn't it? Once you break the rule, it's easier to do it again. More guilt. But since these rules are supremely trivial and of my own making I am going to try not to dwell on it.

So Jamie's pistachio pasta. You've got to admit it looks good - the subtitle is raw garlic, tomato, herb and lemon sauce. The sauce is indeed raw and uncooked, just heated slightly when the pasta is mixed with it at the end. The herbs are oregano and parsley and the pistachios - 50grams of them are scattered on top. The link is to the recipe but made by a fan - Jamie does not have this recipe online.

Whilst I was looking for the recipe online I found that Jamie seems to like the combination of pasta and pistachios because he has a few more examples of the pairing. One of them Farfalle with lemony aragula pasta is rather frustratingly locked behind the paywalls of the Washington Post or the Daily Herald, but I include the picture below. Then there is Sunshine fusilli pasta also not on his own site but on Copy Me That and two which turn the pistachios into a pesto - Rocket and pistachio pesto pasta and Pistachio pesto pasta salad. Rachel Roddy also went for a pesto sauce - with sage in her case - Pasta with sage and pistachio pesto

So much for Jamie. The interesting thing is that on the whole the dishes I found were vegetarian - and yes I have included one from Ottolenghi, but I won't make a big deal out of it other than to agree that this is another self-made rule broken. And I have to say that I would give any of these dishes a go. Lemon was a bit of a constant - and cheese of course. Pistachio, chilli and lemon spaghetti/Meera Sodha/The Guardian; Roast red pepper orrechiette with pistachios and ricotta/Rukmini Iyer/The Guardian; King prawn and pistachio pesto/Neil Perry/Cobram Estate; Parmesan spaghetti with pistachio and parsley pangrattato/My Family Food Life; Green pasta with blue cheese/Nigella Lawson; Pasta with pecorino and pistachios/Ottolenghi

And here I return to that memory of an article on pistachios. Two things. The memory that I had was that there is a boom in pistachios because:

"At a time when all forms of agriculture face stark choices because of climate breakdown, pistachio orchards are expanding: the trees are more drought-tolerant than many crops, including other nuts such as almonds. But if pistachios end up becoming the nut of the future, how will we cope with record-breaking harvests?" Tim Dowling/The Guardian

California it seems has almost overtaken Iran - the largest supplier, and others are also converting from olives to pistachios in places like Spain. Australia too is investing in pistachios although this year they seem to have a problem with a particular pest. Anyway pistachios may well be coming down in price some time soon. Which is good because they are so good in so many different things from ice cream to baklava, through salads and patties.

The second thing is to find out that the 'best' pistachios come from Sicily. Specifically from a village called Bronte on the slopes of volcanic Mount Etna. It is believed that the Arabs brought pistachios to Sicily back in the 9th century and they feature mightily today in Sicilian cuisine. And the soil around Mount Etna, being volcanic in origin, is of course, fertile, although I confess I have never understood how that comes to be. It must be the minerals within the lava I suppose.

They only harvest the nuts every two years - although I think that technically they are not nuts but 'the edible seed of the pistachio tree fruit', because leaving the nuts on the tree in the second year, allows the plant to recover and to provide better nuts the following year. Harvesting in some places is still done by hand because of the almost inaccessible terrain. Bronte has apparently missed destruction from Etna's eruptions three times already. One hopes they continue to do so.

Being the capital, as it were, of the pistachio there is of course a dish called Pasta al Brontese, which you can find online as Fettucine with pistachio cream sauce on a website called Eats Well With Others. There are, of course, several other versions, one of which is from a website called Napolina which calls it Creamy prosciutto and pistachio penne. It's the cream in the sauce that makes it distinctive I think.

I think the people of Bronte also use their pistachios in other ways - you can buy an expensive pesto for example.

I don't know that I have assuaged my guilt, but at least I've written something, however mundane, although there might be a few different ideas for next time you fancy pasta.

YEARS GONE BY

December 7

2023 - Nothing

2022 - Nothing

2021 - Jane Grigson's chocolate pie - a lucky dip

2020 - Puff pastry and fruit - things I have learned

2019 - Nothing

2018 - Keeping the pests away

2017 - Is your sushi really a California roll and are you eating it properly? Should you eat it at all?

2016 - Passionfruit are not Australian