Italian style meals, sustainable gardening tips, and lots of segues in between

When I was growing up, my stepfather’s favorite pie was strawberry rhubarb. I often made it for him when I was in town for Father’s Day. I grew to love it myself.

It is the perfect combination of sweet and tart tastes; right up there with my other favorite sweet and tart combo, Ricotta and Lemon Cookies.

Rhubarb is a perennial plant that is considered a fruit. It has pale green to crimson red stalks, depending on the variety, and green leaves that are poisonous to eat. The stalks look similar to Swiss chard.

Because the stalks are most often used in desserts, specifically pies, you will sometimes see rhubarb referred to as “pie plant” in older cookbooks.

This is my time-honored recipe for making this scrumptious dessert.

Yield: Makes one deep-dish 9″ pie

Ingredients:

6 cups hulled and quartered strawberries (2 pounds after hulling)
3 cups sliced rhubarb (1 pound, maybe 6 stems)
Zest of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
¾ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup cornstarch
½ teaspoon salt
1 9-inch double pie crust
1 egg and a little sugar for the egg wash

Mise en Place:

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 425º

Prep the strawberries and rhubarb as shown.

Prepare the pie crust: I like to use Trader Joe’s frozen pie crusts. Once the crusts come to room temperature, which takes about 90 minutes, unroll one crust leaving it in its plastic packaging as you do. You’ll find that the dough breaks up into wide strips as you unroll it. Not a problem, just use a rolling pin to lightly rejoin the cracks while the dough is still sandwiched between the plastic. Next, remove the plastic covering from one side of the crust. Using the corners of the remaining plastic square, lift the crust, turn it over and plop it into the pie plate. Continue to leave the plastic on as you then press the pie crust down into the pie plate. Remove the plastic and the bottom crust is now ready for filling.

Put the strawberries, rhubarb, lemon zest and vanilla in one bowl and mix gently. Put the sugar, cornstarch and salt in another bowl and mix.

Gently mix the contents of both bowls together for about ten seconds.You don’t want it to become soupy. Pour mixture into the pie plate.

Roll out the second pie crust in the same way as described above. Remove one of the plastic coverings and use the corners of the remaining covering to position the top crust centrally over the bottom crust. There should be an overhang of dough. Next, remove the last plastic square and go around the rim of the pie and tuck the top crust edges in between the pie plate and the bottom crust. This should create a nice seal to keep the filling in the pie.

Flute the two crust edges together, using your fingers as shown in the pictures below, to make a pretty edge for your pie.

Using a fork, beat one egg in a small bowl. Use a pastry brush to spread the egg wash over the top of the pie all the way to the edge. If the egg wash puddles in the dimples in the crust, use a paper towel to mop them up. Lightly sprinkle sugar over the top.

Using a knife, cut small slits into the top crust to allow steam to escape as the filling cooks. Place the pie on a baking sheet to collect any juices that bubble out. Bake pie at 425º for twenty minutes on the middle oven rack. Best to set a timer. Lower oven heat to 350º and cook for about 45 – 50 minutes longer until crust starts to turn golden brown and you can see the juices bubbling.

This pie was so gorgeous, I started humming You’re just too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off of you …

Cool slightly and serve. Vanilla ice cream would be great with it. If you want the inside of the pie to be firm, you’ll need to refrigerate it until the filling cools down and sets.

Related Posts on Cooking with Strawberries
Oven-Roasted Strawberry and Rosemary Jam
Very Berry Clafoutis

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Clafoutis: noun [klah-foo-tee] a tart made of fruit, especially cherries, baked in a thick, sweet batter.

My mother gave me this berry clafoutis recipe about twenty-five years ago after I had picked blueberries with my boys while visiting her in Rhode Island. She had written the recipe on a piece of scrap paper. There are scraps of paper like this all over her kitchen. Mom suggested I make a clafoutis with the blueberries. I had no idea what a clafoutis was, but I made it. It was delicious … and easy. Over the course of that summer, I baked clafoutis of every variety: strawberry, blackberry, pear, apple and plum. They all worked. Little did I know I would be making this recipe for the rest of my life.

Recipes like this, that really work and are beloved, go into a spiral-bound recipe book I was given as a wedding gift over 30 years ago. I travel with this notebook. If there was a fire in the house, after getting the people out, I’d grab this notebook next. Before holidays, I often get emails from relatives asking for specific recipes from this book, like my Grandmother’s cranberry chutney recipe and my mother’s pumpkin pie recipe. My Auntie Terry once emailed me, while she was traveling, to ask if I could send her her fried cauliflower batter recipe. I love how my role as keeper-of-the-recipes keeps me connected to my family.

This recipe is probably the simplest and quickest one @judyschickens. It tastes good hot out of the oven for dessert, or cold the next morning for breakfast. If you want to serve it at a dinner party, you can make it taste a little richer by substituting cream for some of the milk and by sifting confectioner’s sugar over the top after you have baked it. The best part is you can make it with ingredients you already have in the house: eggs, milk, flour, sugar, vanilla and fruit, which makes it perfect for a last-minute dessert on a summer evening.

Ingredients:

3 large eggs. *I had a very small egg from my chickens that I threw in!
2/3 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon salt
1¼ cups milk, or a combination of milk and cream
2 cups fruit. If you use apples or pears, peel, core, and slice thinly.

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350º
Generously butter a 9-inch pie plate

You can make this batter in a food processor, with a mixer, or in a bowl with a whisk or fork. Just be sure to add the milk after you have mixed the other ingredients or the flour will form clumps.

Beat eggs for about 30 seconds. Add flour, sugar, vanilla, nutmeg and salt.

Mix until smooth, about 30 seconds.

Add milk and mix on slow speed until batter is well blended, about 30 seconds.

Pour batter into a buttered pie pan.

Add fruit. Be sure to dry the fruit after washing it. Adding wet fruit to the batter sometimes causes water to pool on the surface as the clafoutis cooks. If that happens, I open the oven door, lay a paper towel over the top, just for a second, and mop up the excess moisture, and then continue baking.

Bake in a preheated oven for 45-55 minutes. The clafoutis should be lightly browned and puffed on top. Test for doneness by inserting a knife into the center. It will come out clean if the interior is cooked. If it doesn’t come out clean, cook for 5 more minutes. Let cool 10 minutes before serving. The pouf will settle down.

Clafoutis-Making, Part 2

My Aunt Rachelle and I were cooking dinner together last week and decided to make clafoutis using cherries that were already in the refrigerator. We made a mess cutting the pits out of the cherries. While it didn’t impact the taste of the clafoutis one iota — it was still gone in sixty seconds — it wasn’t very pretty.

Last night, I was determined to try a cherry clafoutis again and this time make it pretty. That called for a quick stop at Williams and Sonoma to pick up a cherry (and olive) pitter. This time, I was making the clafoutis with Rachelle’s daughter, Elizabeth. We couldn’t wait to get home and try the cherry pitter. What a great tool! Knowing my husband likes to study how mechanical devices work, I tried to Tom Sawyer him into pitting the cherries, but he didn’t take the bait. No worries, the pitter makes quick work of removing cherry pits.

In this clafoutis version, I substituted one 8-ounce carton of heavy cream for 1 cup of the milk and used ¼ cup of 2% milk for the remainder.

The results were spectacular, albeit more calories! The fat in the batter made the clafoutis rise sky-high before it settled back down as it cooled. It looks very different from the photos of the strawberry and cherry clafoutis shown above. Here it is sprinkled with confectioner’s sugar. This version makes for a lovely dessert.

So, clafoutis are a crustless “tart made of fruit, especially cherries, baked in a thick, sweet batter.”

Hope you enjoy!

LET’S STAY CONNECTED!

Follow my photos of vegetables growing, backyard chickens hanging out, and dinner preparations on Instagram at JudysChickens.

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