Monday, April 5, 2010

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie (minus the rhubarb)

About two weeks ago, I was shopping in the Publix produce section and stumbled upon, what I thought was, some exotic variety of celery. It was red instead of green and kind of weirded me out until I read the name on the package: rhubarb. Immediately, delicious memories of summer family reunions with my Grandma's strawberry rhubarb pie started flooding my mind and my mouth. Her SRP was the best and I always went back for seconds. The tartness of the rhubarb really allowed you to appreciate the sweetness of the strawberry. And the crust, oh my grandma's crust. The flakiest, most delicate crust EVER. I immediately started thinking of excuses to try baking one myself.

A week later, my boyfriend's uncle invited us to Easter dinner and, just like that, excuse--check. Saturday we went down to the Farmer's Market and bought some fresh, local strawberries--check check. On the way home we stopped at Publix to pick up the rhubarb and guess what, they were all out--ch-what?! I guess a lot of other people had grandmothers with great strawberry rhubarb pies, too. I was a little discouraged, but not completely, so we went home, sans-rhubarb, and I started googling strawberry pie recipes. Most recipes I found weren't baked, but chilled, with the strawberries suspended in some kind of gelatinous goo--not what I was looking for. I found a ton of strawberry rhubarb recipes but none with just strawberries. I had to make a decision: would I puss out and make a non-grandma jello pie or would I risk it and go all strawberry.

I chose to risk it, and it turned out great. It was super easy to make, too. I bought some pie crust, lame, I know, and used this recipe from Epicurious.com and just substituted the same amount of rhubarb with strawberries and cut back on the sugar a little. Even the lattice top was really fun and easy thanks to this tutorial. It wasn't my grandma's pie, nothing I make ever could be, but everyone at dinner seemed to enjoy and so did I. THEEE ENNND. :)

{ Lattice-Topped Strawberry Rhubarb Pie }

7 comments:

Jessica Hanley said...

Wow! Your pie is beauuuutiful. I don't know if you remember this, but mom grew rubarb in the garden when we lived in Michigan. I never did like the stuff.

Unknown said...

Holy cow! That looks amazingly yummy! I now am going to pressure hubby into making one...cause I don't have the patience to make pie...bread, yes, pie...no.

Unknown said...

Jess: I don't remember that. What else do you do with rhubarb other than pie? On a side note, man, I would love to have a garden.

Beth: Most pie is SUPER easy and VERY forgiving (this one was). It's becoming one of my favorite things to make because of it, ANNND because it's DELICIOUS. :)

Tina said...

You HAVE to make one of those with me when you come up to visit.

And that's next week, right? RIGHT?

And you're not leaving, right? RIGHT?!

Trish said...

It's beautiful... makes my mouth water!

Anonymous said...

MMmmm, my eyes says this was a tasty pie.

Elizabeth said...

The pie looks delicious, even without the rhubarb. Next time!