Crostata with Poached Apricots and Pignolata

Pignoli (pine nuts) are an ingredient much loved and used in Italian cooking— from savory pasta dishes and pesto to meat dishes such as bracciole and rollatini, and an infinite number of desserts. Here it is the topping of the tart, and hence its name, pignolata, lots of pignoli. For me, pignoli are delicious nuts that I recall harvesting from a cone of the big pine tree at the end of my grandmother’s courtyard in Istria. It was a humungous pine tree—or maybe I was small. My brother Franco and the other boys would climb up the tree and shake or knock down the open cones. Burrowed in the open scales of the pine cone were the oval brown-shelled nuts, which the girls would crack open with stone on stone. First we would eat our fill, then we began collecting them for cooking. That fresh, sweet flavor of pine nuts is still vivid in my mind, and to me there is nothing worse than biting into a rancid old pine nut. So make sure that you get the freshest pine nuts, which should be sweet, nutty, and buttery at the same time. Buy them in small quantities, since they are expensive; use them quickly, and if you have some left over, seal them tightly in a plastic bag and freeze them for future use. To heighten their aroma, toast them just before using—although not in this recipe, since you will be baking them.