Have you ever gone strawberry picking? I went to a pick-your-own strawberry farm last weekend, and it was my first time doing so. The weather was incredibly hot, as it’s been for the past two weeks, but three of us were determined to stuff ourselves with local berries, so we dutifully crouched, sun-blocked and hatted, picking steadily in the heat. There were so many strawberries on the bushes that we could hop down the rows pretty quickly, making a game of nudging leaves and stems aside, peering through the foliage, and letting our fingers instinctively scout for half-hidden signals of bright red. Shift the leaves, reach for a berry, inspect, pick, and repeat. It ended up taking less than 45 minutes to fill three hefty boxes with an outrageous amount of strawberries - somewhere on the order of 15 pounds.

The only thing about these wonderful berries is that they don’t last long, so the next game was trying to figure out how to use them all up in the few days we had until they began to turn soft. Eating them out of hand got old rather quickly, but I made some sauce to freeze, and also a strawberry crumble pie, inspired by ones I’d seen on Tigers and Strawberries and Allrecipes. My goal, as it often is, was a dessert both simple and homey, although there’s no good explanation for why it was perfectly reasonable to turn my oven on in 90 degree weather. Sometimes I wonder what a psychologist would say about my “baking rationalizations”!

Making the pie was a breeze, just a regular pie crust bottom (I used a very basic all-shortening one), sliced strawberries, and crowned with an easy crisplike topping. But this pie, good as it was, had a price…the trouble came when I decided to share it with my co-workers.

My first mistake was baking the pie in the morning before work. As I don’t yet own a pie-carrier, I improvised one out of a cardboard box that was just the right size for my pie plate. I gently set the pie in the box and carried it, still-warm, into my car and towards the office. When I reached my destination and stepped out of the car to retrieve the box, I realized that my pie had leaked piping-hot strawberry juice all over the back seat. Looking down, I also noticed a few thick stripes of pink on my white shirt, right on the place I had carefully held the box against my body en route from kitchen to car. I hurried up the elevator to the office kitchen to clean up, and opened the box to find a slick puddle of strawberry carnage sloshing at the bottom of the makeshift carrier. The pie itself looked quite unharmed, however…as though completely oblivious to the destruction it had just caused.

Luckily, once I wiped everything off, my car seat, carrying-box, and even the white shirt could be salvaged. Everyone at work really enjoyed the pie, and we agreed that it could only be made better by the addition of vanilla ice cream. The slightly crisp, buttery topping in particular was lovely with the soft, warm berries. Because the strawberries are so juicy, this pie does not slice into perfect pieces, but this should not deter you. It’s a very good homestyle dessert, and a fast way to use up an excess of berries. Whatever you do, though, just don’t force it to travel while hot!

Strawberry Crumble Pie

For pie crust:
Substitute your own favorite pie crust if you like. This is about the simplest one I know and suitable for my dairy-sensitive co-workers.
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
pinch salt
1/2 cup vegetable shortening, cut into chunks, chilled
3 tablespoons ice water

For pie filling:
2 1/2 pounds strawberries, washed, stemmed, and quartered
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup cornstarch
zest from one unsprayed lemon

For crumble topping:
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup rolled oats
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

For crust:
Place flour and salt in a food processor and pulse a few times to combine. Add shortening and pulse several times until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add 2-3 tablespoons of water and pulse until mixture comes together into a ball. Remove dough from processor and flatten into a disc. Chill 20-30 minutes before rolling out into a 9-inch round and fitting into a pie plate.

For pie:
Preheat oven to 400ºF.
Stir strawberries, sugar, cornstarch, and lemon zest together in a bowl. Pour into prepared pie shell.

For topping, combine flour and brown sugar in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse one or two times to combine. Add butter chunks, process in one-second pulses until mixture resembled coarse crumbs, about 10 pulses. Transfer to a bowl an stir in oats. Sprinkle topping over pie.

Bake pie at 400ºF for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350ºF bake for 35 minutes or until golden and bubbly. Cool fully on a wire rack before serving.

Posted by the cookworm on Friday, June 13th, 2008 at 11:11 pm.