Today would have been my father's 89th birthday. He died when he was 64 and I was 26. A long time ago. Of stomach cancer. He collapsed on the tennis court, where he was known for the scrappy form he had acquired playing handball on the streets of Brooklyn. He had a leather jumprope that he used his whole life. It kept him fit. He could do this extraordinary trick of hoisting his body absolutely perpendicular to a lamppost and holding it there for an impressively long time. His hands were warm and tanned, with raised veins; they always reminded me of walnut shells. He had a beautiful singing voice and as a youth he earned money singing at weddings. His mother told him to stuff food in his pockets before he came home. They took in a border who was a page-turner for the Metropolitan Opera and he would give my father a nickel for every classical piece he could identify whenever they listened to the radio. Needless to say, my dad knew his Beethoven from his Borodin from his Bartok. He didn't go in for sweets so much, preferring to nibble on Spanish peanuts or salted almonds or cashews while he worked at his desk. Though he did have a weakness for chewy black licorice. And, paradoxically, sugary pecan pie. (I think it was the nuts.) He would have liked this simple cake. Not too sweet, not too fussy.
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The recipe for this torte first appeared in Marian Burros' column in the New York Times in September 1983. I've been making it for more than two decades, but I remember it as if anew every August when Italian plums appear at the greenmarket. Times readers clamor for it so often that it's run in the paper more than a dozen times. Amanda Hesser also included it in The Essential New York Times Cookbook. Why is it so popular? Hesser deems it a "nearly perfect recipe" and describes it as "crusty and light, with deep wells of slackened, sugar-glazed fruit." Naturally, I couldn't leave well enough alone, but have tweaked it to include a few flavors that I think further exalt this immensely satisfying and absurdly easy recipe. Any leftovers should be covered with foil, stored on the counter and eaten the next morning for breakfast, with or without a dollop of yogurt. Now that's living.
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