Tip of the Week

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

After enjoying strawberries freshly picked (there's a strawberry stand about a half-mile from my house), I always turn to my go-to strawberry-rhubarb recipe.  Normally this is a crumble or crisp recipe and I love the touch of orange-liquor in it.  Click here for the recipe.  Earthbound Farm's cookbook has a similar recipe with ginger in it for those that like ginger with their strawberries.  This year though I decided to change it up and made a strawberry-rhubarb pie with my leftover strawberries and rhubarb.

The recipe is really straight forward and I always use organic butter in my pastry or pie crusts.  It can be done and you don't need shortening.  Both recipes I used were in Williams-Sonoma's Baking Book.  Pie crust is fairly easy to make once you master it.  The first few times you are always bound to make a few mistakes.  The key to a great pie crust is to not over work the dough.  I love using my pastry cutter when combining the cold butter and flour.  And then add enough water to form a ball of dough.  When you roll it out you should be able to see spots of butter - hence flaky crust.  Over-worked dough with be tough, not flaky.  And remember to vent your double-crusted pies, that's why there's a 'x' in the middle of the pie crust before baking.  Not venting your crust will result in exploding pies and a huge clean-up.





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