Salmon and dill—although they don't pal around in the wild—are made for each other. But salmon and pistachios? Not so much. I think this was my biggest problem with this recipe.
"Pistou," strictly speaking, is—as Bridget discovered and described so well—the southern French analog to Italian "pesto," a combination of basil, garlic, pine nuts and olive oil (the French typically don't include Parmigiano), although the definition has recently become flexible enough to include any finely ground condiment involving herbs, nuts, and oil. Even by those relaxed-fit standards, this concoction feels like a stretch.
The recipe asks you to "finely chop" toasted pistachios, scallions, and fresh dill, then mix in the olive oil. In my opinion, the ingredients shouldn't just be finely chopped, they should be ground into a uniform, emulsified paste—after all, the name shares a root with our word for "pestle." The thing I was making seemed too chunky and atomized, so rather than chop the pistachios, I hauled out my heavy rolling pin and crushed them between two sheets of baking parchment. The crumbly, slightly pasty result seemed like it bound everything together once the oil was added.
But then there was the taste.
In a pesto or pistou, the combination should be more than the individual ingredients. But with each spoonful, I was getting separate "dill," "pistachio," and "salty." For me, the flavors didn't coalesce into something more interesting.
The rest of the dish is promising. Here is another one-skillet meal incorporating the hitherto underused sugar snap pea, and that can only be a good thing. You might remember that salmon is the approved fish in my household, so that was a good thing too. I bought fresh, wild, line-caught Alaskan king salmon at a breathtaking $17.99 a pound.
I also picked up orange and yellow bell peppers, and a pound of organically-grown sugar snap peas, which, in comparison to their conventionally grown counterparts, looked like they'd already been through the Rainbow Gathering and then some.
The peppers are sauteed in a skillet until softened (which took more like five minutes rather than two). The snap peas are tossed in with garlic and a little water and cooked until the liquid evaporates, then tossed with a spoonful of the pistachio mixture. The mottled snap peas turned uniformly green and attractive as they cooked, which was a nice surprise, and the pistou smelled nutty and inviting as it browned. Once the vegetables are cooked, they are removed from the pan, which is not wiped before the salmon is added. Presumably, this is to pick up bits of the browned pistou (which it did). Once again, I needed more time—nine minutes rather than the optimistic six—to cook the fish through, but the process was trouble-free.
At the table, reactions were mixed. Both of my children, inveterate salmon-eaters since infancy, reflexively scraped the suspicious green stuff right off the top without so much as a taste. My wife and I were more willing to give the pistou a chance, but the flavor seemed diffused and uncertain, tending to dull the salmon's character rather than enhancing it. Frankly, the dish would have been better without it. Still, the vegetables were crisp, bright, and perfect, and this is a marvelous method for bringing everything together in one skillet (I'd be tempted to try it again, but next time with boneless chicken breasts).
Like ghee-soaked knafeh, a pistachio-crusted potato-leek tart, and a nut-stuffed cookie inspired by baklava.
