BlueRhu Pie

I love making pie. The effort/annoyance factor versus payoff ratio is perfect. This week, the Rose’s Alpha Bakers group had blueberry-rhubarb pie on the schedule. Ever since the first time I made Rose’s flaky cream cheese pie crust, I’ve had a go-to recipe for pie dough, and it comes out perfectly every single time. I’ve detailed her process for pastry dough before, both on the post about the black and blueberry pie, and the one on the sour cherry pie, so I’ll skip that part of the process here, which, to be honest, doesn’t leave much to talk about. Since Jay’s not a fan of either blueberries or rhubarb (“Yuck! Gross! Disgusting!”), I figured that this would be a good recipe to take to my Thursday BBQ lunch at work. On Tuesday night, I made the pie crust, figuring I’d make the filling and assemble on Wednesday. Then I looked closer at the recipe, and realized that the filling was supposed to cool before going into the shell, so I made it on Tuesday evening, too!

First the pie crust, which I do in the food processor. I’m not going to go into any detail, but I am going to sing the praises of Breville’s designs again. You may recall that we replaced our food processor recently, after our KitchenAid processor died. I think I’ve covered all of the normal food-processory features of the Breville Sous Chef, elsewhere, but look at this!

Ok, pie dough made, food processor unplugged. Done.

Fresh rhubarb, frozen blueberries, sugar, cornstarch, water, and in theory, lemon zest. I had no lemons, so I added a tiny bit of lemon extract, which probably promptly vanished when I cooked it. Bring to a boil, simmer for a minute, then cool. I stashed it in the fridge overnight.

Next day. Roll the pie crust, line the pie plate, and fill it with the cooled filling.

Next, the lattice. I’m bad at measurements, so I had to re-roll my scraps to get my last two strips out of the dough.

The book suggests that this one should be a 10 strip lattice pie, as opposed to the 14 we did for the sour cherry, with the implication being that this filling looks prettier, so you should see more of it…?

So, I went with the 10 strips. This time, I remembered to do the “brush with water, sprinkle with sugar” thing, which means it came out of the oven all sparkly!

So, yeah, more or less a half hour worth of work each night for 2 nights, and I have a pie. There’s a lot of resting, baking, and cooling time, so pie can easily be interspersed between bringing in the trash can & recycling bin, having a cup of tea with my husband, watering new grass, eating supper, doing dishes, unloading a small disassembled pine tree from a neighbour’s trailer onto our wood pile, and all the normal things people do when they get home from work. 😉

As I mentioned, I took this to our weekly Thursday BBQ lunch at work. We split it 6 ways, because one person was out and another often skips dessert, which I’ll never understand. At least one person loved it and had no complaints. Another and I agreed that while it was good, there’s a reason people are familiar with strawberry rhubarb, not blueberry rhubarb. Strawberries must be sweeter than blueberries… or at least sweeter than the blueberries I used. Also, the sugar on the top crust was a hit – “If you put it in your mouth upside-down, it helps with the tartness.” I did notice that there was none left on any plates, though, even after having had roasted bacon-wrapped back bacon sandwiches for the “main.” 🙂

Now, if only I could get rhubarb and blueberries to grow in my yard. We’ve managed to kill off 2 rhubarb plants, and now 3 blueberry bushes have been decimated by rabbits over the last few winters.