Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Strawberry rhubarb pie

While my mom was around I wanted her to teach me how to make rhubarb pie as she makes really good pie, and I have a lot of rhubarb in my yard. It's the only plant I can grow other than noxious weeds. We actually made straberry rhubarb pie. Here's how we did it.

First she had me clean my rhubarb and cut it into about 1 inch sections. You just need enough to fill the pie pan and a little more as it cooks down. I also cleaned and quartered about a cup of strawberries. You combine those in a pot with 1 cup of sugar, 2 tbl spoons of corn starch, 1 tbl spoon of butter, and a little water in the bottom of the pan. You don't need much water as the rhubarb has a lot of water in it. Then cook that down on the stove top and then let it cool.

You make the crust while that is cooking and cooling. You need 3x flour to shortening. (About 2 cups of flour and we used Crisco for the shortening). A dash of salt and 1 tbl spoon of sugar. Smash that together in a bowl with a pie cutter, or we used a potato smasher. Then after it is all smashed together, you kind of grate it between your fingers until it is all consistent. It's hard to explain this but it's kind of like having your hands together with fingers flat and rubbing them back and forth lightly sifting the mixture between your fingers. You do that until it is all the same with no clumps. Then you add just a little cold water. Like 1/4 cup. And mix that all in. Then split it in half and roll the first half out for the bottom of the pie, and then roll the other half out for the top.

Fill the pie with the cool filling, put the top on and seal it all the way around. (I suck at this part as you can see) Poke some holes in it and then bake @ 425 for 20 min. Then reduce heat to 350 and bake for another 30 min.

I guess you can skip the cooking down the filling part and just put those ingredients in the pie crust but it most likely will boil over in the oven and make a mess.

6 comments:

Diane Lowe said...

Mmmm. That pie looks good.

I have a great pie crust recipe I should share with you sometime.

don said...

Absolutely share the pie crust recipe with me!

Soon I'll be picking huckleberries. I might just go on a huckleberry gathering camp out trip. It should be a good year for them as we had so much snow last winter. I can smell them in the forest when they come on.

Courtney said...

MMmmmm Rhubarb pie!!!!! When I was in Germany we use to make it... Ahhhh such tasty memories. I might have to make one sometime soon!

don said...

Nothing says summer quite like it,.. Except huckleberry pie :)

Anonymous said...

I have only one suggestion;

the day before you plan on making your pie, cut the rhubard up, add the sugar and let it sit over night. The next day, before you begin, drain the water off the rhubarb and save.

You are exactly right about the water content of rhubarb. If you allow it to drain itself of all it's content, you can re-add enough to your satisfaction the next day. Otherwise, it's hard to keep a rhubarb pie from being too watery upon baking.

Just a suggestion... do as you will.

Curt

don said...

That's a good one Curt. I just did it how mom told me as she was calling the shots.