My brother-in-law Patrick is a pretty darned good cook. Besides teaching Boy Scouts how to bake cakes in the wilds of northern Wisconsin, he turns out some great soups and roasts and bakes a mean strawberry rhubarb pie. When I asked him where he got the recipe, he said I should ask my sister Patsy who happens to be his wife. She told me that she had created it by changing her mother-in-law’s recipe for rhubarb raisin pie. The result is a winner.
INGREDIENTS:
2 1/2 cups rhubarb
1 1/2 cups strawberries
8 Ritz crackers
1 cup granulated sugar
1 T all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 large egg
1 T butter
1 tsp. sugar to dust the top crust
PROCEDURE:
Clean and chop the rhubarb stalks into half inch pieces. Wash and quarter the strawberries and set the rhubarb and chopped berries aside while you make the crust. Here is my recipe for an easy and good plain pie crust.
Preheat the oven to 350º.
Crush the crackers fairly fine and stir them into the sugar, flour and cinnamon in a bowl. Mix the rhubarb and strawberries with the dry ingredients. Beat an egg until it is lemon colored and stir it into the mixture. The egg and liquid from the fruit will moisten the dry ingredients as you stir.
Roll out half the pie crust dough and line the bottom of a nine-inch pie plate. Fill the crust with the strawberry rhubarb mixture. Dot the filling with small pieces of butter, roll out the top crust and seal it to the bottom.
Use a sharp knife to cut a pattern of small holes in the top crust to let steam escape. Bake for about an hour until the top crust begins to turn golden brown.
After thirty minutes, cover the edges of the crust with foil to prevent them from getting too brown.
NOTE: Nellie, Patsy’s mother-in-law used ordinary saltine crackers in her recipe, but I think that Patsy’s substituting Ritz crackers was an inspired thing to do. I like the buttery flavor. Try it both ways. There should be plenty of rhubarb and strawberries for the next few weeks.
Courage in the Kitchen 