Instructions
Lightly toast the pistachios and grind them as finely as possible; add them to the heated milk and leave them to steep for half an hour.
Whip the egg-yolks with the sugar until creamy. Add the milk and pistachio mixture and the vanilla.
Heat the mixture, stirring continuously, and keep heat very low so it doesn’t boil. As soon as the mixture begins to get dense add the cream, blend and pour into the ice-cream maker.
Did you know?
This gelato was prepared for the Giardino di Bacco restaurant by Massimo Caraci of the Bar Roma in Bronte. The pistachios grown in Bronte, a town on the western slope of Mount Etna, are famous for their excellent quality, so renowned in fact that a Slow Food Presidium was created to get them more widely known and commercialized. Traditionally used in Sicily for a great many recipes for sweets, the pistachio is also called fastùca in dialect, probably from the Arabic fòstak. Pistachio growing is not easy because it requires a special grafting of Pistacia vera on a wild tree (Pistacia terebinthus) also known as scornabecco. From this comes the folk expression: éssiri comu la fastùca e lu scornabéccu, meaning two people who love to stay close to one another.
A dessert with a Sicilian soul, in which the bold taste of the Bronte pistachio pairs perfectly with the sweet and aromatic notes of Ben Ryé or Kabir: Donnafugata’s Passito and Moscato produced on Pantelleria from Zibibbo grapes.
