Crust
| 1/3 C |
roasted, salted and crushed almonds |
| 1/2 C |
whole wheat pastry flour |
| 1/2 C |
pastry flour |
| 2 T |
quinoa flour |
| 2 T |
corn meal |
| 1 T |
brown sugar |
| 6 T (3/4 stick) |
cold butter |
| 1 T |
canola oil |
| 2 T |
water |
Filling
| 2 C |
strawberries (about two baskets if you
eat a few), sliced in half |
| 2 C |
apricots (4 big ones), sliced in
eighths |
| 3 T |
honey |
Topping
| 3 |
strawberries, sliced |
| 1 |
apricot, thinly sliced |
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present on a generous dollop of crème fraiche |
Use the best stuff:
Fresh, organic fruit
Marshall's Bay Area Blend honey
Cowgirl Creamery crème fraiche |
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The Roches have a song (The
Troubles),
which describes their trip to Ireland
and one of the things they'll miss
when they're here:
strawberry-apricot pie.
The song and the pie both sounded great to me.
However, I looked everywhere and couldn't find a
strawberry-apricot pie. So, I set out to make one.
This proved to be really hard.
I tried and failed several times.
Complicating matters is the fact that
organic strawberries and apricots are only
in season together for a few weeks in May each year.
Dedication and persistence have prevailed.
The proof is in the pie pan.
| Crust |
The crushed almonds
should be flour like, bordering perhaps on butter-like. Blend the
flours and the almonds together. Cut in the butter (my wife, Connie,
recommends cutting the butter until it is the size of "small peas").
Add the oil and water.
Form the ingredients together with your hands: the
heat of your hands melts the butter. Make a ball of dough; cover it
and put it in the refrigerator for one hour.
Form the dough into a pie pan: press it in with
your hands, making a scalloped rim with your fingers. Bake the crust
in a pre-heated oven at 375 degrees for 20 minutes.
Take the crust out of the oven and let it cool
until it is warm. |
| Filling |
Put the honey, one cup
of strawberries and one cup of apricots in a saucepan (a double
boiler, which I don't have, might work even better). Simmer this for
about an hour, stirring frequently, until it reduces by about half.
Take the saucepan off the stove and let it cool
until the sauce is very warm to the touch. Stir in the remaining
apricots. Let the apricots heat in the sauce for two minutes,
cooking very slightly.
Stir in the remaining strawberries and immediately
put the filling into the pie crust. Put the pie in the refrigerator
(again, immediately). All this rushing at the last minute means that
the strawberries warm a bit for a few minutes, bringing out their
flavor, then cool in the fridge. This prevents disintegrated
strawberries and wet pie. |
| Topping |
After the pie has been
in the refrigerator for a few minutes, take it out and arrange the
thinly slice fruit on top of the pie. I'm partial to a ring of
apricots on the perimeter, a ring of strawberry middles inside that
and a pile of strawberry ends in the center. |
| Serving |
Put a few heaping
spoonfuls of crème fraiche on the center of a small plate. Smooth it
out in a circle. Place a piece of the pie on top. |
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