Cherry Rhubarb Pie

We participate in a CSA called Farm Fresh to You, located in Capay, CA. These guys are great! They deliver us fresh fruit and vegetables to us once every two weeks. Supporting local farmers is so important, and the fruit and vegetables are far tastier and fresher than anything you can get at a supermarket. One of the added benefits is that you don't get much choice with what you get with every shipment. This forces you to try new foods and new recipes. We got rhubarbs in our weekly box and I was inspired to make some sort of rhubarb pie. Fortunately, we got a bunch of fresh cherries at the Lakeshore farmer's market, so it seemed the perfect union to make Cherry Rhubarb pie.

This was my first time making Cherry Rhubarb pie, and my first time cooking with Rhubarb (I know, I am such a newbie!). I have had a slice or two of Rhubarb pie at the Petaluma Pie company, in Petaluma, CA, which was quite tasty and the inspiration for this dish.

I scoured the internet and found an excellent recipe for Cherry Rhubarb pie on a food blog called Not Eating Out in New York . The only difference is that I used my own recipe for pie dough, and I replaced cornstarch with tapioca flour, which was quite a nice choice!


This was also my first time making a lattice crust-the pretty criss-cross pattern on the pie. I thought it came out pretty good! What do you think? Based on the size of my pie pan, after making my lattice crust, I had left over dough. I used that dough to make Strawberry tarts with rose syrup and cardamon!


Ingredients
Double recipe for Tart & Pie Dough
1 lbs rhubarbs (about 1 1/4 cup chopped), sliced into 2 inch pieces (about 1 Rhubarb stalk)
1 cup of cherries, pitted and sliced (plus any extra juice from the cherries)
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons tapioca flour (or substitute cornstarch)

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Roll out one of the pie dough discs and place into a greased pie pan. With a pairing knife remove any excess dough that is having over the edge of the pie pan. You want the crust flush with the rim of the pan. Add any extra dough to the second dough disc.

In a large bowl, mix the rhubarbs, cherries, sugar, salt and tapioca flour.

With a pasty brush, brush some melted butter all over the crust, on the bottom and sides.

Pour the mixture on top of the rolled out pie dough in the pie pan and spread it out evenly. Lower the temperature of the oven to 375 F.








For this pie, there will be a lot of liquid from the cherries and rhubarb, which will get really hot and want to ooze out of your pie. You could theoretically just pop another rolled out pie crust on top of the pie, but it wouldn't be as tasty. There will be a lot of liquid and moisture oozing from the rhubarb and cherries. By making a lattice weave crust, you will let that extra moisture exit the pie without oozing. A lattice weave is that criss cross dough shape that you see on pies at farmers markets, in magazines etc. It looks complicated, but it is actually rather simple and it looks really beautiful!

Making the Lattice Crust
Roll out the second pie dough disc.

Cut the dough into wide strips. Because your pie dough is in a rough circle, you will have some pieces which are longer than others. This is a good thing!

Place your longest strip down the center of the pie. Place two more strips to both the right and the left of that center piece. The strips closer to the center should be longer than the strips to the outer end.














Starting with the strips on the outer edge, gently fold the strip over itself in half. Repeat with every other strip, so you are alternating between a long strip and a folded over strip like this:














Next, take a long strip and place it down the center of the pie, ontop of the strips you just laid down.
















Take the two or three strips that are folded and lay them down on top of the center strip.

Now, this time you will want to place a vertical strip down to the right of the center strip. Repeat the same process, but this time fold every other horizontal strip over to the left.
















Now place a vertical strip to the right of the center vertical strip and unfold the strips that you had just folded over, this this:















Continue repeating the same process, but this time place the vertical strip to the left of the center strip. If you have more room, continue the process, placing one strip to the far right and far left of the pie. You should have something that looks like this. Take your thumb and press together the ends of the strips into the pie crust.  Gently brush the lattice crust with some melted butter.












Place the pie on a baking sheet with parchment paper. This is really key because you might have some of the cherry and rhubarb juices ooze out of the lattice crust.

Place the baking sheet with the pie on the middle rack and bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes at 375.
Remove from oven and place on a cooling rack for at least an hour before eating.

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