Rhubarb Pie
Here is a simple Rhubarb Pie that oh so yummy-scrummy! Rhubarb is a great summer time treat that everyone should at least try once per season. I love Rhubarb Pie and borrowed (then Tweaked) this recipe From the Food Network's Emeril...
Just remember that while the stalks are edible and very delicious, the leaves are a deadly toxin!
Cook Joyfully, and seasonally!
Rhubarb Pie
- Pate Sucree: recipe follows
- 7 tablespoons butter
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 2 pounds fresh rhubarb, root ends trimmed, peeled, and cut 1/4-inch thick
- 2 pounds strawberries, hulled and sliced
- 1/4 cup rum
- 1 cup sliced almonds
Directions
In a large saute pan melt 3 tablespoons of the butter. Add the sugar, 1/2 cup of the brown sugar, lemon juice, and 1 tablespoon flour. Stir the mixture for 1 minute, to dissolve the sugars. Add the rhubarb and cook for 4 to 6 minutes. Add the strawberries and continue to saute for 3 minutes. Add the rum and carefully flame the mixture. Saute for 1 minute. Mix thoroughly and remove from the heat. Cool the filling.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In a mixing bowl, combine the remaining 4 tablespoons butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 cup flour, and sliced almonds. Using your hands, blend well, until the mixture resembles a crumb-like texture.
Pour the rhubarb and strawberry filling into the pie shell. Sprinkle the crumb filling evenly over the fruit filling. Place the pie in the oven and bake until the topping is golden brown and the filling is bubbling, about 30-45 minutes. Remove the pie from the oven. Let the pie cool on a rack before serving, about 10 minutes. Slice and serve a la mode.
Pate Sucree
2 1/3 cups AP flour
1/3 cup sugar
8 ounces sweet butter-chilled and cut into pieces
2 yolks
2 Tbs. heavy cream
Detrempe the flour, salt and butter in a food processor until it resembles fine meal. Whisk yolks and cream together and pour through the chute of the food processor until a ball forms. Remove from machine and wrap, chill, and use as needed. This makes 2 crusts.
They are herbaceous perennial plants growing from short, thick rhizomes. They have large leaves that are somewhat triangular-shaped with long fleshy petioles. They have small flowers grouped in large compound leafy greenish-white to rose-red inflorescences.
Although the leaves are toxic, various parts of the plants have culinary and medicinal uses. Fresh raw stalks are crisp (similar to celery) with a strong tart taste; most commonly the plant's stalks are cooked and used in pies and other foods for their tart flavour. A number of varieties have been domesticated for human consumption, most of which are recognised as Rheum x hybridum by the Royal Horticultural Society.
Rhubarb is usually considered to be a vegetable; however, in the United States, a New York court decided in 1947 that since it was used in the United States as a fruit it was to be counted as a fruit for the purposes of regulations and duties. A side effect was a reduction in taxes paid
Historical cultivation
The plant has grown wild along the banks of the River Volga for centuries but this variety was known to the West as Russian rhubarb, as opposed to the more efficacious Chinese rhubarb. The expense of transportation across Asia caused rhubarb to be highly expensive in medieval Europe where it was several times the price of other valuable herbs and spices such as cinnamon, opium and saffron. The merchant explorer, Marco Polo, was therefore much interested to find the plant being grown and harvested in the mountains of Tangut province.[6]
The term rhubarb is a combination of the Ancient Greek rha and barbarum; rha is a term that refers both to the plant and to the River Volga.[7] Rhubarb first came to the United States in the 1820s, entering the country in Maine and Massachusetts and moving westwards with the European American settlers.[8]
Rhubarb is grown primarily for its fleshy petioles, commonly known as rhubarb sticks or stalks. The use of rhubarb stems as food is a relatively recent innovation, first recorded in 17th century England, after affordable sugar became available to common people, and reaching a peak between the 20th century's two world wars.
Rhubarb can be dehydrated and infused with fruit juice. In most cases it is infused with strawberry juice to mimic the popular strawberry rhubarb pie.
Rhubarb root produces a rich brown dye similar to walnut husks. It is used in northern regions where walnut trees do not survive.
Cooking
One way is to cut up the stalks into one-inch pieces and stew them (boil in water); it is only necessary to barely cover the stalks with water because rhubarb stalks contain a great deal of water; add 1/2 to 3/4 cup of sugar for each pound of rhubarb,[2] then add cinnamon and/or nutmeglime juice or lemon juice is added. The sliced stalks are boiled until soft. An alternative method is to simmer slowly without adding water, letting the rhubarb cook in its own juice.At this stage, cooked with strawberries or apples as a sweetener, or with stem or root ginger, rhubarb makes excellent jam. Other fruits, with the addition of pectin (or using sugar with pectin already added), can be added to rhubarb at this stage to make a variety of jams: the fruit is added at a ratio of two parts fruit to one part rhubarb, consisting of strawberries, raspberries, or chopped plums, apricots, or apples. Boiling should continue for at least ten minutes after all fruit is completely softened, depending on whether a simple refrigerated jam is made, or if (with longer cooking) jam is to be bottled for a long shelf life.
To make a "sauce" of rhubarb (to which dried fruit could be added near the end), continue simmering 45 minutes to one hour at medium heat, until the sauce is mostly smooth and the remaining discrete stalks can easily be pierced with a fork, which yield a smooth tart-sweet sauce with a flavor similar to sweet and sour sauce. This sauce is called rhubarb sauce, analogous to apple sauce. Like apple sauce, this sauce is usually stored in the refrigerator and eaten cold. The sauce, when stewed over medium heat only a short time (about 20 minutes) and with only a little water so that the rhubarb stalks stay mostly discrete, may be used as filling for pies (see rhubarb pie), tarts, and crumbles. Sometimes stewed strawberries are mixed with the rhubarb to make strawberry-rhubarb pie. This common use has led to the slang term for rhubarb, "pie plant", by which name it was more commonly known in the United States in the latter nineteenth century. In her novella The First Four Years, American author Laura Ingalls Wilder refers to rhubarb as "pie plant". It can also be used to make a fruit wine.
In former days, a common and affordable sweet for children in parts of the United Kingdom and Sweden was a tender stick of rhubarb, dipped in sugar. It is still eaten this way in western Norway, Iceland and some other parts of the world.
Toxic effects
In the petioles, the amount of oxalic acid is much lower, only about 2-2.5% of the total acidity which is dominated by malic acid.[19] This means that the raw stalks may not be hazardous, though they are generally thought to be in the US. The tart taste of raw stalks is so strong as to be unpalatable to many.
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