A couple of years ago, I was shopping at the Italian grocery store Agata e Valentina, and as I went to pay for an item at the takeout counter, I spotted a jar full of cookies studded with pistachios and topped with jam. They looked good, and so I bought one on a whim. It was so good that I bought a whole box. And then another. And then another.
This went on for a few months, until one day I got a bad batch. I don’t know if someone changed the recipe, or if one of the ingredients was rancid, or if they simply sat on the shelf too long and went bad, but they were, well… awful.
The cookies were sufficiently pricey that it seemed like a waste to throw them out, and the prospect of having to repeatedly go down/cross town just to exchange a box of them seemed ridiculous. So I just stopped buying them.
Every now and then I’d be in the store and get tempted, but my confidence in A&V’s ability to produce reliably outstanding cookies had been fundamentally shaken, it seemed like too much trouble to to take the risk.
Then Covid-19 lockdown happened and, like the rest of the world, I found myself at home with more time than usual on my hands and nowhere to buy baked goods, so I decided to see whether I could replicate the recipe. (I also managed to sneak a look at the ingredient list during a crosstown trek to A&V, while peering out from my mask and trying to stay six feet away from everyone—not exactly an easy task given that the bakery items are right next to the main checkout line…)
Anyway, I haven’t managed to quite get the cookies exactly—these are a bit chewier, and I’m not sure the originals used pistachio meal alongside the flour—but they’re pretty close, very easy to make, and incredibly delicious.
Ingredients
1/2 cup white flour
1/2 cup unsalted, shelled pistachios
1/3 cup sugar (I combine white and brown for a little extra kick, but you can use white only)
4 tbsp butter (1/2 stick)
2 egg yolks
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt
Good-quality apricot and/or raspberry jam (no corn syrup or preservatives; I’m partial to Crofters)
Essentially, there are two options for the pistachios:
1) Throw the pistachios in the food processor, grind them to a fine, flour-like consistency, and add them to the dry ingredients with the flour.
2) Chop the pistachios coarsely, and add them at the end, after all the other ingredients have been mixed.
You can also grind half the pistachios and add the other half at the end. There’s some flexibility here.
Anyway, preheat the oven to 350, and soften the butter.
Mix the flour, salt, and (if desired) pistachio meal together in a bowl.
In a separate bowl, cream the sugar and butter with a mixer (hand or stand). Add eggs and vanilla.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet, and blend until smooth. Make sure not to over-mix.
Add chopped pistachios if desired.
Put cookie-sized balls on a baking sheet/sheet of tinfoil lined with waxed paper. Make an indentation in the middle of each with your thumb, and fill with jam.
Bake at 350 approximately 20 minutes. Note that cookies will fall apart very easily when warm but will firm up considerably when they cool.