Heirlooms & Pistachio Milk: Summer Week #14 – 9/4/24

Heirlooms and Pistachio Milk

Recently I enjoyed a celebratory meal at Mint Mark in Madison.

A menu item really piqued my curiosity – heirloom tomatoes with pistachio milk.

I couldn’t resist.

What came out to the table was a shallow plate of heirloom tomatoes pieces laying in a bright green creamy looking substance (pistachio milk!). The dish was sprinkled with dill, chopped pistachios, and kosher salt.

Clean. Simple. Ingenious. AND freaking delicious.

At the grocery store the other day my eyes brushed across a bag of already shelled pistachios. This would go into my splurge category in food shopping, but I went for it.

The nuts were soaked and blended. Pistachio milk was made. Then I took the 4 wheeler out to run the dogs and selected two perfectly ripe heirloom tomatoes off the vine. Up and over the fields I went and grabbed dill flowers (the dill leaf is long gone this time of year).

Back in the kitchen I sliced and cut the heirlooms into bite size pieces. I threw them in the bowl of pistachio milk. Then I decorated with minced dill flower, kosher salt, and chopped pistachios.

I ate it with a spoon.

Then I made it again and again.

My dish differs from Mint Marks in that my pistachio milk does not come out bright green. (I wonder if they add a little green dye to it?). The color of the milk is tan-ish, not super appetizing. But the taste! The dill flowers work, dill leaf is superior. But all in all, this easy dish is fairly simple to recreate in the kitchen if you have the tools to pulverize pistachios.

This is one of my favorite things about going out to eat – discovering new ways to prepare things and then going home and trying to recreate. Sometimes you find a little gem that will become part of the kitchen rotation.

Late August and September will most definitely have heirlooms and pistachio milk in rotation into perpetuity at my farm.

Cheers and happy hot season crops that we get to eat on such mild, lovely days!