Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Donald Market is the new food market that I discovered on my random bus ride. It is located in the corner of Hestine and Nanaimo street. I was attracted by its colorful street stand showcasing some of the freshest seasonal fruits and vegetable. From the countless numbers of spring/summer seasonal delights, I picked strawberry and rhubarb for their color, red, being so bright that I simply cannot resist them.

 

Whenever I shop of sweets, I’ve never wanted to pick-up a strawberry and rhubarb pie despite it is the one of the most popular baked desert. I dislike the taste of store-brand after a bad experience with the Safeway pie. Plus, the celery-like rhubarb stalk looked so weird that I don’t know how to deal with it. So naturally, strawberry rhubarb became the combination I try to avoid, for so long, until one blog entry changed my mind about this duo. So this time I want to try to make this pie myself, to see the difference. I adopt the recipe from the “Simply Recipes“, it goes as following:

3 cups rhubarb stalks cut into 1/2 inch pieces (Trim outside stringy layer of large rhubarb stalks; make sure to trim away any and discard of the leaves which are poisonous; trim ends.)
1 cup strawberries, stemmed and sliced
1 cup sugar
3 Tablespoons of quick cooking tapioca
1/4 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon of grated orange peel
Unbaked pastry for two-crust 9 inch pie

Note: In the recipe of pie-crust, it called for freezing for at least one hour. I found it too long that the dough was hardened so much that defrost take a while. So if you are going to make it in a hurry, make sure you defrost the dough first and then combine the filling with sugar, otherwise too much juice will come out.

Preheat oven to 400°F.

1 Mix the rhubarb and the strawberries with the sugar, tapioca, salt, and orange rind. Let sit for 10 minutes.

2 Turn into a pastry lined pan. Top with the pastry, trim the edge, and crimp the top and bottom edges together. Cut slits in the top for the steam to escape.

3 Bake at 400°F for 20 minutes, reduce heat to 350°F, and bake an additional 30-40 minutes longer. Cool on a rack. Serve warm or cold. If you do cool to room temperature, the juices will have more time to thicken.

The pie came out really nice! a great balance between the sweetness of sugar and strawberry and the sourness of rhubarb, with a hint of orange zest, just wonderful! Now I truly understand the difference between the home-baked-pie and the commercial made one. The pie crust is quite buttery, a nice contrast with the gluey filling. This is my very first pie as well, so I am quite happy with it. I think from now, I will make more pies, with different fillings, ah…..I’ve already got a list of different pies I want to try~ ^_^