Strawberry Fields Forever

With late April upon us, the warmer weather brings memories for me of annual strawberry picking treks growing up in Virginia. A bit cliché perhaps, but there is nothing quite like eating strawberries from the vine with the warm juice trickling down your chin. (Equally fun is throwing over-ripe/mushy strawberries at your sibling, minus the farmer’s threats to kick you off the farm – but that is another story).

I have been experimenting with a few pie crust recipes recently. For years I’ve used Pilsbury refrigerated crusts – they are super easy and actually quite tasty. But I wanted to find a good from-scratch crust, partly out of stubbornness to declare a truly homemade pie. The first recipe or two were fairly involved in getting the right consistency, and the crust ended up being rather dry/flavorless as compared to the refrigerated stuff (which is doubly depressing because then you not only wasted time and created a mess, but your pie isn’t very good).

After burning through a few recipes, I found the one below and like it for the better flavor and fairly crumbly texture. A bit trickier than refrigerated crusts since it requires some rolling, but it’s quite forgiving (read: if the crust sticks to the mat and completely falls apart before getting into the pie dish, its soft/pliable enough to easily squish back together in the pie dish - I speak from experience).  I used the recipe last night to make a strawberry rhubarb pie (hence the stroll down strawberry memory lane), so I am passing along both recipes with my comments:

Pie Crust

The full recipe makes rather an awkward amount – enough dough for four small crusts or 2.5-3 large crusts.  This is handy if you want to freeze some for later, but otherwise inconvenient. A half recipe makes a smallish double crust pie of ~ 7-8 inches. I was making a deep-dish 9-inch pie so I did the math to create ¾ of a recipe (for the egg I blended it, then scooped out what looked like ~ 1/4... ish. This is why I love forgiving recipes.):

Ingrdients:

• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 3/4 cups shortening
• 3 tablespoons white sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup water

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, combine all-purpose flour, shortening, sugar, and salt. Blend together with a pastry cutter until crumbly. In a small bowl, mix egg with water. Blend into flour mixture. (Don’t overmix the dough or it will end up very non-flaky and non-delicious!) Chill in refrigerator until ready to use. Note: I read that you should chill homemade pie crust in the fridge for 1 hour before rolling it out. This allows the gluten to “relax” and helps create a flaky texture. I made ¾ of a recipe of dough, then split the dough into two discs to refrigerate.

Strawberry rhubarb pie filling (from Food Network website):

A brief interlude for those wondering (like me, initially) what the heck rhubarb looked like - it looks like this. Pinkish celery. To prepare, cut off the ends and dice into pieces. If it looks stringy, peel off strings like you would with celery. And never eat rhubarb leaves! They are poisonous. Bad.

 

• 2 1/2 cups chopped red rhubarb, fresh (I sliced it into pretty tiny pieces, but ~1/4 to ½ inch is probably fine too)
• 2 1/2 cups de-stemmed, washed and cut strawberries (In larger pieces – I cut the berries into 3-4 slices each so they were pretty chunky)
• 1 1/2 cups sugar (1 1/4 cups for high altitude)
• 2 tablespoons minute tapioca (I did 3 tablespoons since I like pie less juicy – some comments on the website mentioned using up to 4 tablespoons)
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon zest (I only had lemon juice on hand, so I ignored the zest)
• 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 tablespoons butter, cubed small
• 1 egg white beaten with 1 teaspoon water
• Large granule sugar (I didn’t have this, so I just sprinkled normal white sugar on top. Had the same effect)

Filling Preparation:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Mix the rhubarb, strawberries, sugar, tapioca, flour, zest and juice of lemon, dash of cinnamon, and vanilla. Mix well in a large bowl and pour out into chilled crust. Dot the top of the filling with the butter. Brush edges of pie crust with egg white wash. Roll out the other piece of dough and place over filling. Crimp to seal edges. Brush with egg white wash and garnish with large granule sugar. Collar with foil and bake at 425 degrees F for 15 minutes. Decrease temperature to 375 degrees F and bake for an additional 45 to 50 minutes, or until the filling starts bubbling. Higher altitude will take 450 degrees F and 400 degrees F respectively. Also, you can use a pie bird for extra décor (I left this because that’s what the recipe says – but a pie bird, really? I'm not sure what that is, but I'm pretty sure manhattanites in small kitchens won't have it). Let cool fully before serving. (Don't cheat and serve this pie warm or it will be super runny - it needs to set to let the tapioca gell).

The critical last step? Enjoy!