A pine-nut dish for every palate

During my first years of living in Spain in the mid-1990s, my wife, Eva, and I spent a few weekends in the pine-covered hills outside Barcelona at the deserted, overgrown summer house of her grandfather. We would sit for hours on the stone steps gently crushing the hard husks of pine nuts, extracting the oblong ivory seeds. Just as when she was a child, we followed a basic rule: Cracked seeds went into the mouth, perfect ones into a jar for later use.

We invented menus where every dish included them: Fresh greens with orange segments and soft goat cheese rolled in pine nuts; rice cooked with pine nuts and wild mushrooms; grilled rabbit with dried fruits and toasted pine nuts.

The house had a simple, two-burner stove with an aged gas canister that we hated to use, so, instead, we cooked on a wood fire outside as much as we could. Surrounded by vases of wild roses cut from the balcony balustrades, we ate late pine nut-studded dinners by candlelight, then sat in front of the drafty fireplace to enjoy dessert: fresh cheese with toasted pine nuts and honey.

Technically, pine nuts aren't nuts, but rather seeds in the cones of certain pine trees. Of the hundred or so species of pine trees around the world, about a dozen in the Northern Hemisphere yield desirable seeds. The creamy flesh has a piney, resinous flavor that hints of the earth, the woods.

Pine nuts are prevalent in the food of the Mediterranean, Middle East, and North Africa, where they are eaten in hand as snacks as well as used in a disparate list of cooked dishes.

In Catalonia, pinyons have long played an integral role in the local cuisine, and are used in everything from appetizers to desserts. In the Middle Ages, during their couple of centuries of power in Catalonia, the Moors introduced the practice of mixing the sweet with the savory, of using nuts together with fruit that was often dried.

Pine nuts are key to countless traditional Catalan dishes, such as spinach with pine nuts and raisins; roast goose with pears and pine nuts; roast duck stuffed with prunes and pine nuts; squid stuffed with pork and pine nuts; baked apples stuffed with ground pork, ham, and pine nuts; and panellets de pinyons, a marzipan cookie rolled in pine nuts that is eaten on All Saints' Day.

In Italy, pine nuts are most renowned as a key ingredient in pesto (along with basil, garlic, and olive oil), but are also found elsewhere, as in forcemeats and with sautéed chicken. In Tuscany, they go into a cake called castagnaccio. In Venice there is a torte made from Swiss chard, pine nuts, and currants. A similar torte is eaten for dessert in the French city of Nice.

In the southwestern Languedoc region of France comes omelette aux pignons, an omelet with pine nuts - a dish also found at the other end of the Mediterranean, in Lebanon. Pignons are also used in charcuterie (a variety of meats), in crudités (raw vegetable salads), and in pastries and baked goods, such as macaroons.

In Greece, pine nuts are an ingredient in certain pilaf rice dishes (often along with currants), as they are in Turkey.

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