♥ Strawberry Pie ♥

We've made a reluctant decision that we're going to reduce the number of strawberry plants we grow as they take up so much space. Our 40 or so plants are going to a new home on J's allotment. To cheer ourselves up and celebrate our final berries of the year we made a rhubarb and strawberry lattice pie.

We also inaugurated our ♥ new pie dish ♥ Thanks to Kwyjibo for carting it in his luggage despite threatening to pack it with his dirty smalls and M for lugging it over the Atlantic.

Recipe:

Crust:
• 300g plain white flour
• 150g butter
• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• 3-4 tbsp cold water
Filling:
• 4-5 stems rhubarb
• 500g strawberries
• caster sugar to taste
• knob of butter

Chill the pastry for 30min before rolling out half for the base; return the remaining half to the fridge until needed for cutting strips for the lattice top.

Preheat oven to 180c.

Line the pie dish with pastry and blind bake the base.

Cut the rhubarb into equal sized pieces approximately the size of the strawberries. Halve the large strawberries, keep the small whole.

Melt the butter in a thick bottomed frying pan, add the rhubarb and strawberries.

Once the fruit has started to release juice add sugar to sweeten to taste.

Stew until the rhubarb is just soft, don't stir otherwise the fruit will quickly disintegrate. Spoon softened fruit into a colander placed over a bowl to catch any juice that strains out.

Reduce the juice in the frying pan until it coats the back of a spoon.

Check sweetness is to taste, place cooled fruit and reduced juice into the base of the pie.

Roll out remaining pastry and cut strips to weave lattice and trim the edge.

Bake until pie crust is cooked through (15 - 20 min).

Rhubarb, Rhubarb

It rained so we had a quiet weekend indoors.

Pickled rhubarb, we'll report back when we break the seal.

Rhuby G&T

Rhubarb ketchup. We followed the recipe from our well-used "Preserves: River Cottage Handbook No.2 Hardcover" by Pam Corbin. (here is a similar recipe).

In all honesty the sieving of the roasted pulp necessitated breaking out a box set - bathed in the the flickering light of the telly box, a rhubarb-infused gin on the go you could be forgiven for thinking that you were shimmying at your very own house party. All efforts told the recipe yields a substantial quantity of ketchup. We filled a 0.25l jar and then froze the rest in ice cube trays our preferred strategy for portioning sauces, stocks, purées &c.

We tested it out as a sweet/sour relish on a favourite beetroot and black bean burger dinner. DELICIOUS. We will be repeating this before the season is out; we don't foresee our frozen batch lasting out for long.

Pie Plant

Nothing like new season rhubarb baked in a pie to make ye ♥ sing.

Sweet American Pie

Inspired by a recipe recently posted on Diary of a Tomato we made this sweet Rhubarb Buttermilk Pie for our Sunday brunch.

The sweetness of the custardy, buttermilk filling offsets the tart rhubarb perfectly. We left out the ginger for a more trad rhubarb and custard flavour and used light muscovado sugar for the Amish no-roll pie crust. This was the perfect pie to put together on a Saturday evening as the ingredients are measured out in cups and the pie assembled with little mess and few utensils.

Our Victoria Rhubarb is perhaps a little less attractive in an open top pie. We need to work a bit more on our presentation: we needed to be a bit more stingy on the rhubarb and to be honest our pie could have done with perhaps 5min less baking but we were distracted by the England v Italy, World Cup match.

Rhubarb, rhubarb

 

 

Edit: We didn't follow any particular recipe for this cordial.

We try to add as little water as possible when softening the rhubarb so not to dilute it. We test the rhubarb with a fork when softening it and take it off the heat immediately as we don't like to let it stew. We leave the pulp to strain in a jam muslin overnight(remember to scald the muslin in boiling water). We're stingy on the sugar when making the syrup so that the rhubarb flavour is very raw. We add the juice of a couple of lemons for a more rounded tang. We don't add citric acid as this makes the cordial too sharp; we make it in small batches so we don't need to add preservatives in addition to the sugar. We keep the cordial in the fridge, though we use it up very quickly.

Hope this helps :)

Trimmings for Dinner

Kale, beetroot thinnings for a veggie side, rhubarb for pud. The Chelsea-chopped chives for the flower vase... and a friend for company. Put out the candlestick.

A view of the length of the plot.

A Quick Brown Fox

Since the rain has kept the plotters away, the critters have come out from hiding.

The allotment fox warming itself on a compost/manure heap, ain't she a beauty.

We took the Channel4 Foxes Live fox survey and recorded our encounter with her on the sightings map.

We planted out our French Beans as we couldn't keep them indoors a moment longer. We've built them a fleece tent to try protect them from the predicted frosts.

The list of allotment jobs is growing: paths to be mowed, peas to be weeded, broad beans to be staked, grilles to be lashed... but it being soggy we took the responsible decision of let alone and scurried home.

More rhubarb baked in a pie to warm the cockles.

It's Raining, It's Pouring

Rhubarb Crumble, the best cure-all for rainy day blues.

Despite our dread of getting mired in the soggy slough that is the outdoors, we pulled on our wellies and splashed down to the allotment for our first pickings of the season: 510g prepped for the pot. Oh bounty!

A lavender bag panel inspired by the Natural History Museum's Dippy.

Signs of Life

New seedlings:

All Year Round cauliflower and Cavalier peas.
Down the allotment we greeted old friends:

Columbine

Rhubarb

Sorrel

Horse Radish

Allotment Kitteh No.3

 

We built a pea trellis reusing prunings we scavanged from the kerbside green waste collection bins along our road.✩ No need for plastic netting.✩