You’ve heard about pizza, right? Crust. Tomato sauce. Mozzarella cheese. Maybe some pepperoni slices, and a few other random veggies and cured meats, like sausage.

And nuts.

Wait, what?

Pistachios are one of the most wonderful ingredients you could ever put on a pizza. But it has to be the right kind of pizza.

We discovered this fact at Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, Arizona, many years ago. That place makes a pizza called the Rosa, which has red onions, Parmigiano-Reggiano, rosemary and pistachios, drizzled with olive oil. It’s fantastic. (Picture below.)

A couple years ago, we were spending some quality time in Turin, Italy, and showed up at an extremely popular restaurant called Pizzeria Fratelli Roselli. It was a rainy day, and we were exploring the town by walking around. Normally, to get a table, you have to make a reservation weeks in advance. But they were nice and told us they had a table that wasn’t reserved for another half hour. We said we’d eat and run in 20 minutes.

One of the pizzas we ordered broke all the rules (which, of course, there are no rules in pizza — the only necessary ingredient that makes pizza pizza is the crust). This one had no sauce. It did have a thin layer of mortadella bologna on the dry crust with a huge ball of Burrata cheese on top and drizzled with olive oil. And crushed pistachios. Truly wonderful pizza.

We made pizza this week at home, using our usual sourdough crust. We made several kinds of pizza, but one had a tiny amount of sauce, mozzarella and Pecorino Romano cheeses and onions. After one bite, it was clear: This pizza really needed some pistachios. (Won’t make that mistake again!)