One winter, around the time I was tinkering again with recipes for fragrant fir needles, I received a gift of beautifully packaged pistachios. The pistachios were tiny and perfect, grown in Afghanistan. The nut trees—Pistacia vera—are native to the Middle East, Asia Minor, and Central Asia, and they are related to mastic, sumac, and cashews. The fir needles were perfuming the room: Our Christmas tree, grown organically by Windswept Farm in Vermont, and sold in Brooklyn, is a welcome annual source of winter flavor in my kitchen.
Soon, a new, cosmopolitan cookie was born: pistachio fir cookies pair the fresh holiday flavor of fir needles with the buttery green nuts. Here’s how to make them.
Photography by Marie Viljoen.
These tender pistachio fir cookies are a vivid cousin to the more familiar pignoli cookies that inspired my version. Entirely different, swapping out pine nuts for pistachios, they are also comfortingly familiar, their marzipan foundation yielding gently to the first bite. And then there is their aroma: fir-fragrant with orange zest for a citrus note. These green cookies are highly giftable and very snackable. Just what you want after a long winter walk. Or while watching a bad news cycle. Or for celebrating the beginning of longer days and the promise of spring.
I think of fir needles (as well as the needles of spruce, pine, and hemlock trees) as a spice or fresh herb. These edible evergreens have a long history of food-use in North America that pre-dates the arrival of Christmas.
In terms of quantities, a couple of tablespoons of needles are more than enough to lend a deeply appealing aroma to any dish (or drink), and their flavors are unique and versatile (everything I want from an ingredient). You can use your holiday tree if you know that it has not been treated with anything toxic (a recent New York Times story about Belgian trees sprayed with flame retardants raised my eyebrows—not something you’d want in your house, but that’s a whole other story). Some commercially grown Christmas trees may have been treated with herbicides, fungicides, or pesticides, just like many food crops. Ask, if in doubt. You can also gather small fresh branches from your garden-grown tree, or from a wild specimen.
* One evergreen tree must never be eaten: Yew trees (species of Taxus, botanically) are toxic.
To make fir paste, pluck or cut off the needles from fresh fir twigs and transfer them to a spice grinder. Pulse until they are exceptionally fine with no larger pieces left. You could also chop them by hand, as long as you work them until they are exceptionally fine and almost paste-like. The damp, intensely fragrant fir is now ready to incorporate into the dough for the fir pistachio cookies. (It is also delicious mingled with salt or sugar for a long-lasting seasoning and rub for roasted root vegetables; baked apples, pears, and quinces; broiled salmon, or rich roasted meats like duck or pork belly.)
Fir tip: Fir resin is deliciously aromatic, and it is also sticky. After processing the fir needles wipe down knife or spice grinder blades with either mineral oil or rubbing alcohol, then rinse in warm water.
