Fresh Apricot Pie

April. The yard waking up. Tomi planted three new tomato starts. Sunday farmers market. Tomatoes, shiso, kabocha when in season, mushrooms in fall. The shopping list is short and exact.

Miya, 9, can shape onigiri without falling apart. She uses wet hands. She knows the order without being told.

Cold soba lunch. The buckwheat noodles. The green onion and ginger. The summer kitchen.

The shiso. The chipped bowl. The newsletter on Sunday.

The cat was the cat. Mochi at fifteen sleeps most of the day. She still eats with enthusiasm. She still sits at the kitchen window watching the back garden.

I cleaned the kitchen Sunday afternoon. Wiped the counters. Reorganized the drawer where the chopsticks live. Sharpened the knife. The reset was the reset.

Coffee with a friend Saturday morning. We talked about books, about kids, about the way our forties became our fifties. The talking is the thing.

Miya is in elementary school. The Saturday Japanese school continues. She still complains. She is still going.

Yoga Tuesday morning. The studio in Sellwood. Eight students. The class was the class.

The newsletter went out Sunday morning. The opening line took an hour. The piece took five. The piece was what it needed to be.

Therapy Tuesday. We talked about the wedding. We talked about Barbara. We talked about Fumiko. The hour passed. The work continues.

Tomi watered the garden Saturday morning. The shiso was head-high. The shishito peppers were producing. The kabocha was running on the fence.

A panic flicker Tuesday evening, brief, manageable. I breathed. I drank water. I went outside and walked around the block. The flicker passed. The body did its work.

I wrote at the kitchen table from six to eight. The newsletter was forming. The opening sentence was the hard sentence — they always are. I rewrote it five times. The fifth time was the right time.

I read for an hour Sunday night. A book of essays by a Korean-American writer about food and grief. I underlined a paragraph that said exactly what I had been trying to say in the newsletter for months.

Made dashi at five-thirty AM. Ten minutes in the kitchen alone with the kombu and the bonito flakes. The day's first prayer.

I made onigiri for tomorrow's lunch. Three triangles. Salted plum in the center. Wrapped in nori. The cling wrap. The drawer where I keep them. The system.

Sunday farmers market in the rain. The vendors knew me. The Hood River apple stand had honeycrisps. I bought four pounds.

I drove to Uwajimaya Wednesday. Kombu, bonito flakes, white miso, a small bag of mochiko for tomorrow's project. The store smells like home.

The neighbor's dog barked at nothing for twenty minutes Sunday afternoon. The neighbor apologized. I told him I had been writing through it and the white noise was helpful. He laughed.

I texted Miya a photo of the shiso. She texted back a heart and a single word: home.

A reader sent me a handwritten card this week. Her grandmother had cooked Japanese food in 1970s Boise. She had felt alone in it. The newsletter, she wrote, made her feel less alone. I taped the card to the wall above my desk.

Miya's old room is now my office. The desk is by the window. The shiso outside. The newsletter in progress. The afternoons are quiet.

The rain in long sheets Tuesday afternoon. I made tea. I watched it from the porch. The cottonwoods on the next block were silver in the wet.

The honeycrisps from the Hood River stand came home in a canvas bag that week, but it was the apricots—small, blushed, almost too ripe—that I couldn’t stop thinking about. After the newsletter finally went out, after the therapy hour and the panic flicker and the long rain on Tuesday, I wanted something that didn’t require a decision. Pie is like that: the fruit tells you what to do, and you just follow. This one I’ve made enough times that my hands know the order without being told—a little like Miya with the onigiri, a little like any good ritual.

Prep Time: 30 min | Cook Time: 45 min | Total Time: 1 hr 15 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 double-crust pie pastry (enough for a 9-inch pie dish), homemade or store-bought
5 cups fresh apricots, halved and pitted (about 2 lbs whole)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 large egg, lightly beaten (for egg wash)
1 tablespoon coarse or turbinado sugar (for topping)

Instructions

Preheat the oven. Heat oven to 425°F (220°C). Position a rack in the lower third of the oven.
Prepare the filling. In a large bowl, combine the halved apricots, granulated sugar, flour, lemon juice, almond extract, and salt. Toss gently until the fruit is evenly coated. Let the mixture rest for 10 minutes while you prepare the crust.
Line the pie dish. Roll out one disk of pastry and fit it into a 9-inch pie dish, leaving a 1-inch overhang. Refrigerate while you prepare the top crust.
Fill and dot with butter. Pour the apricot filling into the prepared crust, spreading it into an even layer. Scatter the small pieces of butter over the top of the filling.
Add the top crust. Roll out the second disk of pastry and lay it over the filling. Trim both crusts to a 1/2-inch overhang, then fold the edge under itself and crimp to seal. Cut four or five 1-inch vents in the top crust to allow steam to escape.
Apply egg wash and sugar. Brush the top crust evenly with the beaten egg. Sprinkle the coarse sugar over the surface.
Bake. Place the pie on a rimmed baking sheet (to catch any drips) and bake for 20 minutes at 425°F. Reduce the oven temperature to 375°F (190°C) and continue baking for 20–25 minutes more, until the crust is deep golden and the filling is bubbling through the vents.
Cool before slicing. Transfer the pie to a wire rack and let it cool for at least 2 hours before cutting. The filling needs time to set; slicing too early will result in a runny pie.

Nutrition (per serving)

Fresh Apricot Pie — What the Farmers Market Keeps Asking Me to Make