It’s been a rare moment that the Portland Press Herald food coverage actually inspired me, especially in its recently abridged edition that has been shoved from the national food day newspaper coverage on Wednesdays to a skinny Sunday section, meant to replace the very Mother Earth style news that was found in the old Source.
Last week the paper ran a dueling article on the vigor and vagaries of rhubarb. On one side of the equation was the PPH food editor’s rare appearance in which she shows her admiration for rhubarb versus the paper’s prolific food pro, Meredith Goad, who expressed her extreme dislike for rhubarb. I don’t think either side was all that convincing, though Goad’s take had substance and style in its viewpoint.
After reading these two punchy diatribes I had the sudden urge to make rhubarb pie. And in the process of devising a different recipe from the usual, I wound up with one of the tastiest rhubarb pies ever. One that even a rhubarb foe might consider.
My favorite pie is sour cherry under a dome of a rich butter and lard crust. And the extreme tartness of raw rhubarb enlivened with sugar runs a close second.
But another source of inspiration was from a recent “Off-Duty” article in the excellent Saturday edition of the Wall Street Journal. Beyond the New York Times and other respectable publications such as the Boston Globe’s newly revived “Wednesday Food” section, and even a zippy food section at the Bangor Daily News, the WSJ has some of the most intriguing food articles spanning the spectrum from restaurant chefs to original recipe articles on various topics. Some of my favorite dishes have been culled from that newspaper’s food section.
I was intrigued by the feature American Pies: Recipes from a Landmark Café. The café is the Woodruff Café and Pie Shop in Monroe, VA. The reigning pie queen of this legendary southern café is the 102-year-old Mary Fannie Woodruff who still holds court.
No surprise about the quality of these pies featured since in the repertoire of pies, cakes and biscuits, southern food and baking win easily as the best of American cooking. So far I’ve made all the pies featured in the article except the strawberry. I’ll wait for local strawberries to arrive.
It was the pie dough recipe, however, that also intrigued me. It’s much different from the pastry dough I’ve made for years based on a recipe from Edna Lewis in which the predominant fat is butter with an ounce or two of freshly rendered lard. The latter gives pie dough it’s utter lightness and flakiness
This dough was based on shortening—the most American ingredient in pie making. It uses 1 1/3 cups shortening mixed with 1 tablespoon butter, to 4 cups of flour, a strange proportion to be sure. It was further enriched with a whole egg, white vinegar and water.
It was then that I decided to try this dough to make rhubarb pie. Four cups of rhubarb chunks (about 1 1/2 pounds) were mixed with a heaping cup of sugar, 1/4 cup flour and spiced with cinnamon, mace and cardamom. The latter is a spice that I deem a secret ingredient in many pie preps. Try it in apple or peach pie and even a sprinkle or two in a cherry pie. It’s magical.
I opted against a double crust pie and instead covered the filling with a very crispy crumble topping. My favorite way to make a crumb topping is to add melted butter to the sugar and flour mixture, instead of creaming it into the mixture. It yields a deliciously crunchy crumble.
The topping also uses oatmeal. I usually use Quaker Oats oatmeal instead of more rarefied versions that are available locally. In this case my Quaker Oats stash was minute oatmeal, which I purchased by mistake instead of the longer cooking variety. I think this easily absorbed oat added a better texture to the crumble rather than crunchy chards of thicker oats.
As for the pie dough, it was sensational. Though I’ve always shunned using Crisco shortening, preferring the purity of butcher leaf lard (I get mine from the Rosemont butcher shop), I’m open to using this age-old shortening. Now when I do, I remember the line from the movie The Help, where Minnie holds up a huge can of Crisco and says to the character played by Jessica Chastain, “Crisco will change your life.”
It may have changed mine—at least in the kitchen.
Note, I halved that the recipe for the pie dough that appeared in the WSJ to yield dough for a double crust pie instead of the 4 crusts from the original recipe. Halving the ingredient for the 4 cups flour was easy, but cutting the 1 1/3 cups shorting in half is tricky without some serious calculation; I converted the shortening measurement to grams for easier recalculation by half. Cutting an egg yield in half is quirky too. You can eyeball it or weigh the beaten egg on a digital scale and cut it in half.
Note: I mistakenly did not cut the butter measurement in half. And I think that’s for the better.
In choosing rhubarb find the reddest stalks at the market. Kay Fowler at Spring Brook Farm in Cumberland sells a super-red heritage variety of rhubarb that’s a deep red in color. She says it’s the best. It’s available at the Wednesday or Saturday Falmouth/Cumberland farmer’s market or at Spring Brook’s farm store on Greely Road in Cumberland Center.
Rhubarb Crumble Pie
Ingredients
- Pastry
- 2 cups flour
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- Pinch salt
- 127 grams shortening, chilled well or frozen for a few minutes and cut into small pieces
- 1 tablespoon butter, chilled well or frozen for a few minutes and cut into small chunks
- 1/2 of a beaten large egg
- 1 1/2 teaspoons vinegar
- 1/4 cup cold water
- Filling
- 4 cups rhubarb pieces
- 1 heaping cup sugar
- 1/4 flour or tapioca flour
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon mace
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 2 tablespoons water
- 1 tablespoon butter cut into small pieces
- Crumb Topping
- 1 heaping cup flour
- 1 cup quick oats
- 1 cup brown sugar, packed
- 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon butter, melted
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Whisk the flour, sugar and salt together in a large mixing bowl or use the food processor method to pulse a few times to mix.
- Either by hand using a pastry cutter or careful pulsing (abut 8 pulses) in a food processor combine the flour/sugar/salt mixture with the shortening and butter until crumbly, leaving some larger pieces of fat in the flour.
- Whisk in a measuring cup the water, vinegar and egg until thoroughly combined. Gradually add this to the bowl of food processor, mixing gently with a wooden spoon or pulsing a few times until the dough leaves the side of the bowl.
- Dump out onto a lightly floured board and bring the crumbly ends together using either a light touch by hand or a bench scraper, kneading lightly until the mass holds together.
- Cut in half and wrap each half in waxed paper. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or overnight. Only roll out one of the pastry disks and save the other for another pie. I rolled out the second piece of dough to line a pie plate and put in a plastic bag to freeze until future use.
- Roll out the dough to fill an 8- or 9-inch pie pan, crimp the edge and refrigerate while you make the filling.
- Trim the edges of the rhubarb stalks and cut in half or inch pieces. Put into a glass measure until it reaches a brimming 4 cups.
- Dump into a large bowl and add the sugar, flour and spices. Mix well by hand. Add the water and mix again.
- Fill the pie shell and dot the top with butter.
- Mix all the dry ingredients together and mix in the melted butter stirring with a fork until the mixture forms lumps. Cover the pie with this.
- Put on a large baking sheet covered with parchment (to catch the spills) and bake for about 45 minutes to 1 hour until the crumb topping is set and browned and the filling is bubbling nicely. Bake longer if needed to make sure the filling is fully cooked. You can tell by looking at the center of the pie filling, which should be bubbling through the topping. Serve warm with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream.