It's been a while since I last posted; summer vacation is in full swing, and it began with a whirlwind of local-Midwest travel and a lot of work. I spent the first few weeks working lots of evening shifts at the library, which has meant not a lot of cooking dinner for my family. Hence, no cooking, no blog posts. I'll be trying to remedy that in upcoming weeks as our CSA season has (finally) begun and I'm doing a little vegetable-cooking experimentation with the stuff we've been getting - e.g. kohlrabi and more leafy greens than you can shake a stick at.
Summer also means, for me, PIE. Although there are scores of pies that can be made year-round and are delicious (apple, for one, not to mention all of the tasty chocolate/cream-type pies), their constant availability makes me take them for granted. The fact that you can always make an apple pie means that you can just, you know, get around to it. But summer fruits have to be seized on quickly, in-the-moment, or you lose your chance at making the pies. This year, I embraced strawberry-rhubarb with great gusto. What you see above are the cobbler and the pie that I made using the aforementioned filling. The pie was a particular hit. I served them side-by-side at two sequential cookouts and both were devoured in their entirety. The reception of these two desserts was inconclusive in re: superiority of pie vs. cobbler. It's now the tail-end of the strawberry season and I'm moving deeply into peach-pie making. However, the issue of strawberry pie is one I've been grappling with.
America's Test Kitchen has been my go-to for quite some time, and while they provided me with a swell strawberry-rhubrab pie recipe, their straight-up strawberry-pie recipe was disappointing. There seems to be a school of thought that strawberry pie involves a prebaked pie shell filled with halved fresh berries, which are then entombed in a gloppy, gelatinous glaze like the dinosaurs at the La Brea Tar Pits. I am Against The Glaze. It can be bought pre-made in horrifying red-tinted clear-plastic pouches at the grocery store, a shudder-producing product if ever their was one. If your fresh berries are lovely and not super-firm grocery-store ones (which produce the Worst Pie Ever when combined with the premade glaze - rock-hard berries in unctuous artificial spoo), they can just be eaten plain with some ice cream and good on you. But I've been wondering whether there's a good cooked-strawberry pie recipe out there - one that combines the berries with a bit of sugar, maybe a zest of some sort - underneath a top crust, the juice of the berries creating an oozy compote inside with nice pie-filling texture and no disturbingly anatomical gelatinous globs within. Anyone? Anyone?
2 comments:
I have increased the strawberry content of the strawberry/rhubarb pie recipe because rhubarb is scarce and costly in Florida....I have come to the conclusion that you might just put strawberries, sugar, maybe orange zest or lemon zest, tapioca to thicken and cook like blueberry pie...
The Settlement Cookbook (tagline: "The Way to a Man's Heart), first published in 1903 in Milwaukee offers this baked strawberry pie recipe:
Pie crust
1 quart berries
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, separated
bread crumbs
1/2 cup powdered sugar
Line a pie plate with an uncooked pie crust. Sprinkle with grated bread crumbs. Fill with berries, hulled, washed and drained. Cover with 2 egg yolks, beaten well with 1 cup sugar. Bake in quick oven at 425 degrees F for 20 minutes. Before serving, cover with a meringue, and put under broiler for a moment until it is a golden color.
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Most pie fillings are far too sweet for my taste, so I'm a big fan of Cooking Light pie recipes. I skip their low-fat crust (why bother if you're not going to go with full fat?), but they usually halve the sugar content, which means a tarter, more full-fruit taste instead of bland sugary sweetness. Take a peek at these recipes:
Spring Strawberry Pie Mmmmm! Balsamic vinegar and strawberries. What a combo. I would purchase balsamic from Vomm Fass if I were you. (Lucky you to have a Vomm Fass just down the road. It's one of a million things I miss about Madison!)
A cornucopia of pie recipes from Cooking Light
Fresh Cherry Pie I've had good luck with this one. I don't use the almond extract, for obvious reasons, but instead I use vanilla extract with surprising good luck. Using sweet cherries means you can cut the sugar in half or more. Excellent!
In other news, I just made the most amazing pork rib and potato stew ever. I will send you the recipe. It really knocked my socks off. It's a one-dish, stovetop Spanish home-cooking-style recipe.
It's really simple, but the big difference is you break the potatoes up into chunks by inserting the knife in the middle of them and twisting instead of cutting them into perfect little chunks. For some reason, this make the dish 10 times better! Also you cut the ribs into little bite-sized pieces, so the marrow can escape and help add flavor to the dish.
I'll also send you a terra firma copy of the strawberry pie recipe, but in the meantime, I urge you to find yourself a copy of the Settlement Cookbook. It really is quite good, and it will appeal to your foodie sensibility.
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