Chocolate Chip Pistachio Cookies
This is a take on an all American favorite combined with an all Arab favorite pistachio cookies!
I love to combine foods, and come up with new and fresh recipes, and this cookie is part of that effort, and very good they are too!
Being half American and half Palestinian I have all my life seen two sides of different worlds, with an understanding of both.
When I was younger I always felt I wasn’t fully one or the other and it wasn’t until I grew up that I realized I was actually both.
Seeing different sides of things allows me to be able to combine those two things in a way that may not have been combined before.
It’s great fun to do with food.
Desserts in the Arab world are many and varied, from the subtly sweet to the extremely tooth achingly sweet!
Cookies, puddings, and cakes and all kinds of things in between they have it all.
Gharaibeh is a butter cookie, an extremely delicious one, that is finished with half a pistachio nut pressed into the top, sometimes giving them the name pistachio cookies.
This was one of my favorite desserts when I was a kid.
I just love gharaibeh!
But there is so much more, like Knafeh, the cheese, with shredded wheat topping drenched in simple syrup.
Delicious!
I will be making this dessert soon, and I will be putting it up online.
I’m looking forward to hearing back from everyone who tries it.
Of course the American chocolate chip cookie goes all the way back to 1938 and traces its history to Whitman, Massachusetts.
Invented by chef Ruth Graves Wakefield who owned and operated the Toll House Inn at the time.
I’m not sure my pistachio cookies version will be as world renowned as her chocolate chip cookie has been, but I’m still very happy having combined tastes from two different worlds.
I’m imagining that this cookie would go very well with a scoop of Arab pistachio ice cream, or booza as it’s known in Arabic.
This is such a tasty ice cream that is thickened using mastic, or gum arabic which is a tree resin, along with salep which is made of ground orchid roots.
Don’t you ever wonder who came up with such an ingredient?
Who first realized that there was a use for ground up orchid roots?!
This ice cream is different in that it is a bit stretchy, and gummy in its texture.
But it’s really a tasty treat!
All this writing about booza has made me want to make some.
If and when I do, I’ll be sure to film it and put it up online.
The other thing about this cookie dough is that you can easily refrigerate it for baking in batches when you feel like having some cookies.
It also freezes well allowing you to keep the dough around even longer.
Double the recipe and you will have a source of fresh cookies in your freezer for whenever you choose.
Bake a batch and let me know your thoughts!
Chocolate Chip Pistachio Cookies
Ingredients
- 1¾ cups Flour all purpose
- ½ tsp Baking Soda
- 14 tbsp Butter
- ½ cup Sugar
- ¾ cup Brown Sugar
- 1 tsp Salt
- 2 tsp Orange Blossom Water
- 1 Egg large
- 1 Egg Yolk large
- 1¼ cups Chocolate Chips
- ¾ cups Pistachios coarsely chopped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375° (245°).
- Mix flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
- Mix the sugars in a bowl.
- Melt butter and add to the sugars. Whisk well until combined.
- Add orange blossom water.
- Add egg, and yolk. Whisk until well combined.
- Stir in flour mixture.
- Add nuts and chocolate chips.
- Place spoonful of cookie dough on sheet pan about and inch and a half apart.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes or until lightly brown.
