It has been a long time since my last post. Way too long. I guess life happened in between. However, I realised that blogging and practicing my photography was a missing part in my life. This time, I will just take it a bit easier. Post whenever I have time and not on scheduled days. As I mentioned: Sometimes life just happens. Offline.

Offline, I still continued creating dishes in my tiny kitchen. A few weeks ago, I found on the sales shelf in an Anthropoly shop a book called “À la mère de famille“. A french baking book with real classics which I know from my own childhood: Confiture de lait, marrons glacés, pâtes de fruits, calissons and roudoudous. Most of you will say “Thanks for all those pretty names, but what the heck are they?”. I hope that over time I will try them all and present them here on the blog.

Today, I keep it simple starting with a pistachio paste, since I needed it for a pistachio cake. The cake recipe is the first one I am trying out of the “À la mère de famille”. The recipe to the pistachio cake will follow soon. However since it asked for pistachio paste and I wasn’t able to find it in the grocery store, I asked Google to help me with my search and stumbled on this pretty blog.

I adapted his recipe to come to (I believe) a nice result.

Makes: About 1 1/2 cup
Difficulty: Easy
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Baking Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

• 125g Untoasted, unsalted pistachios
• 30g Ground almonds (you can also use whole almonds peeled)
• 60g Granulated sugar
• 20g Water
• 3 drops Almond extract (optional)
• 3 tablespoon Hazelnut oil (Use any other nutty oil if you have, otherwise use a neutral tasted oil such as sunflower oil)

Method:
Place the pistachios on a paper lined pan, toast them for 15 minutes at 150°C then let them cool down (I am impatient and put them for a little in the freezer).

Leave the sugar and the water in a saucepan on medium heat.

When the sugar syrup reaches 121°C/ 250 °F (it helps to have a thermometer. If you don’t have one, keep stirring until the liquid boils and keep it boiling for a while until the liquid becomes thicker), throw in the pistachios and stir for a few seconds.

The pistachios will crystallise, that’s normal: when they are covered in sugar and almost no syrup is left in the saucepan, remove them and scatter them on parchment paper to cool down slightly.

Place the pistachios, the ground almonds (or the whole almonds) and almond extract in a food processor.

Mix for about 45 seconds until you obtain a coarse mixture.

Add 1-2 tablespoons of hazelnut oil (or the oil of your choice). I added a third tablespoon after a while so that the mixture became a real paste.

Keep mixing for about 5 minutes or until the mixture becomes a thick paste.

You can use the paste as mentioned for the Pistachio Cake or simply spoon it out.