The combo of strawberry and rhubarb always makes me think of my Mom. Her strawberry-rhubarb pie would grace the table each spring as surely as tulips would burst from the ground. When I was a child, I turned my nose up at it for being so tart. By the time I grew up and learned to actually like it, it had become to me like a painting that’s hung on the same wall in the same place for twenty years–I didn’t pay it much attention.
I first made this crostata four years ago as my own spin on mom’s traditional pie. A year and a half later, in the dead of winter, mom had a massive stroke. There were no pies on the table that spring, and there never will be by her hand again. I’d be lying if I told you I wasn’t kicking myself just a little now, wishing I’d appreciated her version more while it lasted.
But those if-only’s only sour the present moment, which is quite sweet when I choose to see it as such. Whereas in the past, Mother’s Day meant a card and a gift exchanged across the country, now Mom–and Dad–live right here in Healdsburg. For the second year in a row, we get to celebrate with three generations of mothers and daughters in my family, and I can finally ask mom for her recipe … while serving her my Strawberry-Rhubarb Crostata.
At the risk of sounding a whole lot like Forrest Gump, life is like rhubarb and strawberry. A little bit sour, a little bit sweet, each one intensifying the properties of the other. There’s balance there, and both need to be tasted in order to embrace the full pleasure of the whole.
From my family to yours … happy Mother’s Day.
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Strawberry-Rhubarb Crostata
One of my mom’s springtime standards is strawberry-rhubarb pie. Here’s my take in a rustic crostata–a type of free-form tart. In any form, rhubarb’s tart taste is a perfect foil to sweet strawberries.
1-1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose unbleached flour, divided
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, divided
3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract, divided
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 tablespoons nonhydrogenated shortening (like Spectrum Organic)
1/4 cup ice water, as needed
1 pound rhubarb, cut into 1/2-inch chunks with any ‘stringiness’ peeled off and discarded
1 pint strawberries, cut into 1/4-inch slices
1 teaspoon lemon zest
Pulse together 1-1/2 cups flour, 1 tablespoon sugar, salt and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla in a food processor. Pulse in butter and shortening, adding ice water by tablespoons as needed, until mixture comes together and there are still a few lumps of butter. Form dough into a ball, then flatten into a disc, wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 15 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Roll out dough into a 12-inch circle (dough should be between 1/4 and 1/2 inch thick) on parchment paper.
Mix together rhubarb, strawberries, lemon zest, 1 tablespoon flour and 1/4 teaspoon vanilla. Mound on dough, leaving a 1-inch border along the edge. Fold up the edge and crimp as you go along so that the edges stay up and are well-secured. Ease crostata, still on the parchment paper, onto a cookie sheet and bake 40 minutes, removing parchment paper after the first 15 minutes. Dough should be golden-brown and the fruit bubbly and syrupy. Let cool before serving.
Serves 8
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