Basic Black Walnut Pie

Jisoo's first week in Seattle. Seven days. Every day has been the kitchen. Every day has been cooking. Every day has been the thing I have been building toward for nine years: standing beside my mother in my kitchen, learning, cooking, being corrected, being taught, being a daughter in the most ordinary way — the way millions of daughters around the world are daughters, in kitchens, with their mothers, learning the food that will carry them forward.

Monday: we made kimchi together. Jisoo's kimchi, in my kitchen, using my onggi pots. She salted the cabbage with her hands — the hands in the photo, the real hands, right here, in my kitchen. She made the paste. She massaged it into the leaves. She was fast. She was sure. She did not measure. She never measures. I watched and I tried to memorize her movements and I couldn't because the movements are Jisoo and you cannot memorize a person, you can only be beside them.

Tuesday: we made mandu. Jisoo's pleats were perfect. Mine were adequate. She showed me, again, the way she showed me in Busan: "The thumb goes here. The fold goes there. Press. Seal. Again." I folded a hundred mandu. The last ten were almost as good as her worst. Progress. She said, "Better." Not good. Better. Better is the Korean mother's compliment. Better means: you are improving. Better means: I see you trying. Better means: I love you enough to tell you the truth.

Wednesday: Jisoo met Karen. This is the paragraph I have been building toward for the entire week, the entire visit, the entire nine years of this blog. I drove Jisoo to Bellevue. She sat in the passenger seat holding a jar of her kimchi — a gift for Karen. She was quiet. She was nervous. Jisoo does not get nervous. Jisoo was nervous.

Karen was at the door. In the walker. Lipstick on. Hair done. Earrings — the gold studs from church. She had made her apple pie. The house smelled like cinnamon and butter. David stood behind her. He was wearing a tie.

Jisoo walked up the front steps. She stopped in front of Karen. The two women looked at each other. They had never been in the same room. They had waved at each other on screens. They had sent messages through me. They had prayed for each other. They had never breathed the same air.

Jisoo spoke first. She said, in English — she had been practicing, James told me later; she had been practicing this sentence for weeks — she said: "Thank you for raising my daughter." Her English was accented and careful and the sentence was the most important sentence she had ever spoken in a language that was not hers. Karen's eyes filled. She reached forward. She took Jisoo's hands. She held them. Her hands were shaking. Jisoo's hands were still. Two mothers' hands. One shaking. One steady. Both holding.

Karen said: "Thank you for giving her to me." And then they held each other and they wept in the doorway of the split-level house in Bellevue where I grew up, and I stood behind them on the porch with Hana on my hip, and I was crying, and David was crying, and Hana was pointing at a bird in the tree and saying "Da!" and the world was exactly as broken and perfect as it has always been.

They ate pie together. They ate kimchi together. Karen ate Jisoo's kimchi and said, "This is the best kimchi I have ever tasted." Jisoo ate Karen's pie and said, through the translator app, "This is the most American thing I have ever eaten. I love it." They sat at the table. They could not speak to each other without the translator app. They did not need to speak. They looked at each other across the table and they understood everything because they had shared a daughter for thirty-one years and the sharing was the conversation and the conversation was finally, at last, happening in the same room.

There is no recipe this week. There is only the table. Karen's pie. Jisoo's kimchi. Two mothers. One daughter. One granddaughter. One table. The table held everything. The table always holds everything.

The story ends at the table—Karen’s pie, Jisoo’s kimchi—and I keep returning to it. I don’t have Karen’s exact recipe. She has made that pie a thousand times and she does not measure either, not unlike Jisoo with her kimchi paste. But in the days after that visit, I needed to make a pie myself, to stand in my own kitchen and do the thing Karen has always done: fill a shell with something sweet and honest and put it on the table. This black walnut pie is what I made. It is not Karen’s apple pie, but it is a pie, and right now a pie feels like the only right thing.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 50 min | Total Time: 1 hr 5 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell
3 large eggs
1 cup light corn syrup
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups black walnut halves or pieces

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat your oven to 350°F. Place the unbaked pie shell in a 9-inch pie pan and crimp the edges as desired. Set aside.
Make the filling. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, corn syrup, sugar, melted butter, vanilla extract, and salt until smooth and fully combined.
Add the walnuts. Stir the black walnut pieces into the filling mixture until evenly distributed.
Fill the shell. Pour the walnut filling into the prepared pie shell, spreading the walnuts evenly across the surface.
Bake. Place the pie on the center rack and bake for 45–50 minutes, until the filling is set at the edges and just slightly jiggly at the very center. If the crust begins to brown too quickly, cover the edges loosely with foil after the first 25 minutes.
Cool completely. Transfer the pie to a wire rack and allow it to cool for at least 2 hours before slicing. The filling will firm up fully as it cools.
Serve. Slice and serve at room temperature, with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream if desired.

Nutrition (per serving)

Basic Black Walnut Pie — The Pie That Held Everything