Pistachios

Pistaches mondées (blanched and peeled pistachios) teach a small pastry lesson with a wide reach: heat is useful only until it has done its one job. The water loosens the papery skin; it must not cook the nut. Bright green and clear-flavored, the finished pistachios are ready for crèmes, petits fours, pralines, nougats, and the top of a confection.

The classical entry assumes a pastry cook's standing stock of raw pistachios, with only the quantity needed for service skinned at the last moment. The bulk batch is brigade scaffolding and can go. The home equivalent is one cup, one saucepan, and your fingers. The entry gives no fixed proportion because the method is the same at every scale; I have simply chosen a useful home quantity and added an ice-water stop to arrest the cooking reliably.

Scalding and last-minute peeling are the preparation itself, and they must stay. Watch the skins rather than wandering away with the clock: the one step that decides the result is lifting the pistachios from the water as soon as their skins wrinkle and slip.