I want to tell you why I came up with the idea for Pistachio Chicken Pastry Puffs. You would think that a girl who specializes in pastry arts would be totally focussed on creating a dessert. To be honest, I played with the idea of making pistachio brittle. That particular confectionery is gorgeous to look at, delicious and used frequently as a garnish for desserts either as a wafer-thin shard or crushed as praline. I am quite sure that I have made several hundred pounds of pistachio brittle over the years.
Pistachios are often used in both the sweet and savoury kitchen. When I think back to the wonderful dishes we made at my workplace that included pistachios as an ingredient, it occurs to me that they were typically very special dishes reserved for VIP events.
It is little wonder – they are expensive little nuts. Perhaps one of the reasons why they are ‘trop cher’ (too expensive for everyday use) is that it takes so many years (8 to 10 years) before the medium-sized deciduous tree produces its first major crop. (That reminds me of the cork trees in Portugal where the bark is harvested every nine years – an interesting fact.) So that aside, the uniquely similar properties of the pistachio nut is what inspired me to make a special appetizer dish that would feature them at their finest. A savoury bite like Pistachio Chicken Pastry Puffs seems apropos to this very pretty and tasty nut.
Pistachio Chicken Pastry Puffs cut on a diagonal
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