Italian Pistachio Cookies

I brought these to a club – I know, even for me it’s a bit much. Well, I made cookies, and I was going to a club right afterwards so…I brought them. Don’t worry, I didn’t go around and give them to random cute guys on the dance floor. 

Xiu is a beautiful club on the 6th floor of the Park Hyatt Hotel in Beijing, you can see the city from the terrace – it’s just gorgeous when the sky is clear. But other than that it’s very overrated. It’s gotten a range of awards, but the reason I went the first time was because of the “Most Beautiful People” and “Best Place to Find a Date” awards – and you know what? Lies. Blatant lies. You’ve got sleazy old men hitting on 20-year-old Chinese girls, desperate housewives from season 12 reliving their youths, and prostitutes – both premium and cheap. And yet, despite these people, and the bad service, and the overpriced drinks, I kept going back. Yes, yes, of courses it’s because of a boy. They have a band that plays there every night and the drummer is so perfectly beautiful that it’s almost worth the 6 pound gin and tonic just to gawk at him. Did manage to meet him and the rest of the band, gave them cookies, got his number, but it didn’t work out. These pistachio cookies may not have been able to seduce him, but I think it did make the rest of the band and my friend who works there like me more. Consider them friendship cookies rather than aphrodisiacs. My friend, Annabel, really liked them (thanks for a great couple of nights out, and remember, no more musicians for us).

I don't know if they are Italian cookies, I got them from another blog.  I was very biased, I wanted to make pistachio cookies, and found a recipe for these Italian ones and thought they must be good.  They were.  

Recipe from here
Ingredients (better to buy the nuts whole and grind them at home)
90g pistachios, finely ground +100g pistachios, roughly chopped
100g almonds, ground
50g egg white (1-2 medium eggs)
120g sugar

icing sugar

Method
Preheat oven to 180C. Mix the ground pistachios with the almonds, egg white and caster sugar.  Shape them into small balls and roll in the roughly chopped pistachios.  Arrange on a baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes.  Dust with icing sugar when cooled.