Pistachio

A lovely yellow rice pudding, with the exotic flavor of saffron; interestingly, it’s dairy free. Use cinnamon or cardamom in addition to (or in place of) the rose water (available in small bottles at Middle Eastern stores) if you like.

Trifles are anything but trifles: they take a good deal of work to put together, they’re about as caloric as desserts get, and, in the right serving vessel—like a large glass dish with tall, straight sides that reveals the tempting layers of cake, cream, fruit—they’re absolute showstoppers. In England, one is often wowed by the guiltless and masterful employment of loads of cream in many desserts. Trifles are a showcase for the British love of cream—in this case both whipped and pastry.

Everybody loves a quick and tasty pasta dressing, and there is nothing better than a pesto. All you need is a blender. Combine all the ingredients, and—voilà—you have a sauce. Everybody by now is familiar with pesto made with basil and pinoli nuts, but during one of my visits to Sicily, I enjoyed a pleasant pesto surprise: the pinoli were replaced with pistachios. Although Sicily is known for its delicious pistachios, 98 percent of the pistachios eaten in the United States come from California. So do try this pesto rendition.

Spumoni is a delicious dessert made from three flavors of ice cream stuffed into a cup, and cut in four when frozen. The ice-cream colors reflect the colors of the Italian flag—red, white, and green—and spumoni has long been a big item on the menus of Italian American restaurants. Spumoni has its origins in a Neapolitan dessert, and supposedly came to America in 1905 with Salvatore Lezza. Lezza’s spumoni can still be had on Chicago’s Upper West Side. I filled many a cup with my own homemade ice cream in my early restaurant days, in the seventies, but spumoni is still delicious when made with good store-bought ice cream as well. Here rum gives the spumoni an extra layer of flavor, but the juice of the sour cherries is a great alternative.

One of my mom’s friends, Yoya, gave me this family recipe long ago and I absolutely love it. Because you caramelize the sugar early in the process, the time it takes to prepare the caramel is much shorter than with other recipes. These make wonderful gifts and are nice to have around for guests.

This recipe takes very little time to make but amazes everyone. The natural oil from the peanuts, or any other nut you are using, comes out when you grind it, and the sugar barely holds this crumbly, nutty sweetness together.

They say that pumpkin pie is one of the scents that men react to most strongly. I’m not sure if I agree, but I think that by combining a smooth pumpkin filling with a chocolate crust, you have a good chance of getting your guests’ attention. I roast the pumpkin in the oven to ensure the filling isn’t watery. It’s really not possible to overcook the pumpkin; in fact, the longer you cook it, the more the flavors become concentrated. If you can’t find a sugar pumpkin, butternut squash or another hard-skinned fall squash would make a fine substitute. You can roast the pumpkin and bake the crusts at the same time, speeding the process along.

This lovely salad can slide from late winter into early spring when bouquets of radishes proliferate in the market. Some people find endive too harsh, but here the flavor is mellowed a bit and the leaves are given extra snap by a saltwater soak. This is a study in textures, with the silky endive accented by the crunch of the nuts, all lightly bound with a tart but delicate Meyer lemon dressing. Because of the egg yolk, the vinaigrette won’t last for more than two days in the fridge, but you’ll find lots of uses for any leftover dressing. Try tossing it with boiled Piccolo potatoes or use it on your favorite greens.

I learned this recipe when I spent the summer in the kitchen of the Hotel Sofitel in Paris, some twenty-five years ago. Roland Durand, the chef, graciously accepted me as a stagiare, or apprentice, and I was able to work in all sections of the kitchen, including the butcher shop and bake shop. I love this cake for its texture, which is moist and rich-looking but very light, and for its versatility. It goes with so many different things, but it’s also delicious all by itself. I like to dress it up with a Pistachio Crème Anglaise and some raspberries or tart cherries.

This pretty, rich-tasting pesto enhances simple grilled fish or meats (try it with grilled chicken thighs). You might also consider serving it on an antipasto platter rolled up in strips of grilled eggplant, or tossed with small balls of fresh mozzarella called bocconcini, or “little mouthfuls.”

This make-ahead dessert is a great choice for dinner parties—the individual servings take very little time to plate and garnish, so you can enjoy yourself while still wowing your dinner guests with an elegant, delicious finale. The recipe’s first step calls for infusing its liquid ingredients with chopped pistachios; though the nuts themselves are later strained and removed, their fresh, delicate sweetness flavors every creamy spoonful of the rich custard. Prepared pistachio paste (available online; see Sources) adds more nuttiness and body.

Why wouldn’t you bake cookies for yourself? Cookie dough freezes beautifully, and if you cut it into portions before freezing, you can have a plastic bag filled with the potential for cookies any time you feel like it. These salty-sweet cookies use one of my go-to ingredients: homemade nut butter. I use a Vita-Mix to churn just about any freshly roasted nut into butter, but you can accomplish the same trick with a food processor and a little oil. A food processor nut butter won’t be as super-smooth as one made in a Vita-Mix, but in a cookie like this, a little sandy texture from the bits of ground pistachio is a good thing.

This recipe was inspired by my discovery of single-serving-size butternut squash the size of hand weights at my local farmers’ markets. Roasted butternut squash is a great thing to have on hand for use in various other dishes, though, so feel free to roast a larger one and use 1/2 cup of the flesh here, refrigerating the rest for up to a week or freezing for several months in an airtight container.

Shortly after the first time I went to Cork Wine Bar, a bustling neighborhood restaurant a few blocks from me in Washington, D.C., I started making one of their signature appetizers for dinner parties. It’s simply bruschetta with sliced avocado, crushed pistachios, a drizzle of pistachio oil, and a sprinkle of fleur de sel. It is rich and pretty perfect as an hors d’oeuvre. When I started making it for myself, it wasn’t quite doing the trick. I wanted a little protein on there, as well as something to cut the richness. A can of one of my favorite products, smoked oysters, was the answer, as were tart green olives. I like to pump up the smokiness even further by tossing the oysters with a little smoked paprika, but I’ll leave that up to you. With or without it, this appetizer has grown up into a meal.

Nut crunch makes a great pie crust! I absolutely love this pie, but it doesn’t fit into the composed dessert realm of Ssäm Bar’s menu and it isn’t quick and easy to pack like Milk Bar pies need to be, so it never made it onto a menu. It’s a delicious recipe you’ll only find here.