Vegging Out: Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
ABrooklynLife and her hubby and sister are celebrating their third year in a CSA (short for community supported agriculture). CSAs are great, and the concept if simple: You pay an up-front fee for an entire growing season and reap the benefits of locally farmed produce from June through November. The farmer, of course, benefits from the group's patronage.
For the first two years, we were part of the West Village CSA at the McBurney YMCA on 14th Street, and if that's near where you work or live, it's a great CSA. This year for geographical reasons, we've switched to the Cobble Hill group and signed up for both fruit and veggies. The goods, which are organic, come from Green Thumb Farm Farm in Water Mill, Long Island.
One of the best things about being forced to take a variety of fresh veggies is figuring out what to do with them. Among the produce we got last week were strawberries and rhubarb. These two items are the key ingredients of one of my favorite desserts ever: a strawberry rhubarb pie. Damn it's good!
Whatever you do, when you make the pie, MAKE YOUR OWN CRUST. We prefer the recipe from the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book. You cannot compromise on either crust or fresh whipped cream. If you're going to the trouble to make a pie ... well, you should be able to handle rolling out a crust and beating some cream into stiff peaks.
For the recipe...
Crust
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup shortening or lard
6-7 tablespoons of cold water
In a mixing bowl, stir together flour and salt. Cut in shortening or lard until pieces are the size of small peas. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of the water over part of the mixture; gently toss with a fork. Push to side of bowl. Repeat till all is moistened. Divide dough in half. Form each half into a ball.
On a lightly floured surface, flatten out one ball of dough with hands. Roll dough from center to edges, forming a circle about 12 inches in diameter. Wrap pastry around rolling pin. Unroll onto a 9-inch pie plate. Ease pastry into pie plate, being careful not to stretch it. Trim even with the pie plate.
For top crust, follow same instructions (only place on top of filling) and don't trim--use excess to pinch together to form seamless crust.
Pie filling
1 cup, plus 2 teaspoons sugar
1/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon sale
1/5 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 1/2 cup sliced rhubarb
2 1/2 cup hulled strawberries, halved and quartered if large
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 tablespoon milk
1. Roll out 1/2 of dough, place on pie plate. Roll out other half, place on cookie sheet and refrigerate
2. Whisk sugar, flour, salt, cinnamon. Add rhubarb, strawberries, lemon juice, vanilla and toss until fruit is well-coated. Set aside 10 minutes.
3. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Put oven rack on lower 1/3.
4. Spoon mixture into pie shell. Distribute butter on top of mixture. Cover with top pie crust. Cut seams to vent. Brush crust with milk and remaining two teaspoons of sugar.
5. Bake for 30 minutes. Reduce to 350 and bake until crust is golden, fruit tender, juices bubbly, at least 25-30 minutes. Cool an hour.
(Tip: You'll probably need to cover the pie with tin foil for the last 30 minutes to avoid burning the crust.)
Whipped cream
Get a small carton of whipping cream. Beat with a blender until soft peaks begin to form. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla and several tablespoons of sugar (up to 1/3 a cup, to taste) as you beat into still peaks. Serve immediately.
8 Comments
Leave a comment
it's true. a strawberry-rhubarb pie is one of the great overlooked desserts in this world. nothing quite compares to a completely superfluous H when baking ...
I can confirm that this was a damn fine slice of pie. I will be your dessert guinea pig any time. The homemade whip cream was amazing also. Cool Whip take note, your product kinda sucks.
This will be our first year doing a CSA (Clinton Hill) and we get our first batch this Thursday. After reading the article about Whole Foods in The New Yorker and what Micheal Pollen has had to say about the increasingly agri-business approaches to satisfy Walmart's "organic" movement my wife and I felt that it was important to start trying to shop closer to home so to speak.
Good stuff!! :)
Though I've never been a fan of rhubarb...
I think joining a CSA can make you a better cook in the long run. You're presented with new challenges every week. Last year we got this alien looking veggie which turned out to be a kohlrabi.
We have been looking forward to doing this ever since we first heard you guys talk about it. Aside from really supporting it, neither one of us get enough fruits or vegetables (does strawberry ice cream count?), so what a great way to start! I also really miss the idea of foods being "in season", which seems to have all but vanished since I was a kid. Finally the strawberry and pumpkin picking totally sold me, even if all the other reasons weren't good enough!
Is Rhubarb Pie a Northern thing? This is only the second time in my life that I've heard of such a concoction - the first time was from my ex-Bostonian father-in-law. Sure looks tasty!
wikipedia says that strawberry-rhubarb pie, at any rate, is a Midwestern thing. it does seem sort of folksy.
Got our first veggies last night... wasn't really that much available but the people there said it's always fairly thin this early in the season... we got scallions, tokyo bekana, bok choy, salad greens (amazing, so much better than the "mesclun" available in any supermarket), strawberries and a pot of thyme. Looking forward to this summer. :)