Oh, Constant Reader! I feel like I’ve let you down. Here, I make the best pie I’ve ever made, and then I forgot to take a picture of it! Oh, for shame. You’ll just have to take my word for it. But I do have witnesses. Maybe they can leave a comment. I had a bunch of people over for dinner. In the final rush of getting everything prepared, I totally forgot that I had to take a picture of this beauty to show off how great I am.

This pie is summer in a dish. I mentioned before that peaches are in season right now. What better way to enjoy them than in a pie? Great fruit pie has some kind of savoury, spicy note to cut through all that sweet fruit: Strawberry and rhubarb has cloves, Blueberry has nutmeg, Apple has cinnamon. Ginger just seemed natural for peaches. I made one mistake with this pie (one that I’ll admit to anyway): I chopped the ginger into slivers. It didn’t turn out quite like I wanted: every so often you’d get this big blast of ginger. What I wanted was this nice hum of ginger in the background. So I modified the recipe below to go with grated ginger.

• 12 oz flour
• 8 oz butter
• 4 oz cold water
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 1/2 lbs fresh peaches
• 2 thumb-sized pieces ginger, peeled and grated.
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 tbsp corn starch
• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 egg

Make a 3-2-1 pie dough, spiked with sugar, and place in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Bring a pot of water to boil. Add the peaches and boil for 1 minute. Drain. Remove the skins from the peaches. Remove the pit from the peaches: cut a complete circle around the peach then twist one half off the pit. Carefully take the pit out of the other piece. Don’t worry if you don’t get this absolutely perfect for every peach (you won’t), it’ll still taste delicious and look great.

Slice the peaches up, put’em in a bowl. Add the ginger, sugar, corn starch and lemon juice. Mix to combine. Leave for about 15 minutes.

Heat your oven to 425F, position a rack in the bottom of the oven. Roll out your pie shell, place in the pie dish. With a slotted spoon, spoon the peaches into the pie until you reach the top of the pie dish with a flat surface of peaches. Construct your lattice crust on top. Crimp the edges. Beat the egg with a tablespoon of water. Brush on the crust. Place on the bottom oven rack, bake for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350F, sneak a cookie sheet under the pie and cook for another 30 – 35 minutes until the crust is golden and the peaches are bubbling.

Cool on a rack for at least 2 hours. Don’t poke or prod the pie for any reason during this time. This is when the filling gels; any perturbation disturbs the pie and you get a sloppy, soupy mess that tastes like pie, but doesn’t look like pie.