The Harvest

The strawberry harvest, that is.

Since we made the great journey north to Washington and stayed, every year (this is the second year) we pick strawberries.  This annual trip takes us to Bellingham, WA, where the strawberries are sweeter.  We unload the kids, give them buckets, and hope they pick more than they eat.  We pick as much as we can muster and hope it is enough to make our jam for the year. This year we got some extra help: cousins.

These extra little fingers really helped our quota.  We brought back 30 pounds for ourselves.

When we got back home to Yakima, the real work began.  Washing and de-stemming, washing and de-stemming...late into the night.  In the name of sanity, I just bagged these guys up and froze them.  This was quite a project and I was seeing strawberries for days afterward.  After I recovered from this...I could continue with my jamming project.

This year I made strawberry jam, more berry cherry jam, rhubarb strawberry jam and of course strawberry pie.  My mother in law, Sharon, gave me her special recipe.  It was made for strawberries from Bellingham.  Yum.

Strawberry Chiffon Pie

From Grandma K's Fannie Farmer Boston Cooking School Cookbook, 10^th Edition and the May 2011 issue of Bon Appetit

 Pie Crust

I made this crostata one night and loved the crust.  I thought it might make a delicious pie crust, so I gave it a try instead of the graham cracker crust indicated in the original recipe.  This one is straight out of Bon Appetit.

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) chilled unsalted butter, cubed
1 large egg

1 Tbsp. whole milk

 

 Combine both flours, sugar, and salt in a processor; blend for 5 seconds.  Add butter; pulse until butter is reduced to pea-sized pieces.  Wisk egge and milk in small bowl to blend; add to processor and boulse until moist clumps form.  Gather dough into a ball; flatten into a disk. wrap in plastic wrap; chill at least 1 1/2 hours up to 2 days ahead.

Or - if you do not have a food processor, like me, because it mysteriously stopped working, substitute food processor with a fork and biceps.  Blend as directed.

Roll dough out place in pie pan, brush with an egg, and bake @ 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until browned.

1	Graham cracker pie crust
1 ½ cup	Fresh strawberries, washed and hulled
¾ cup	Sugar
1 Tbsp	Gelatin
¾ cup	Water
1 Tbsp	Lemon juice
1/8 Tsp	Salt
2	Egg whites

(I actually made this recipe then decided to double it because it just did not look like it was enough for my pie pan.  I was glad I did.)

1.    Slice strawberries and cover with ½ cup sugar. Let stand ½ hour.

2.    Mix gelatin, ¼ cup sugar, water, lemon juice and salt in a saucepan.  Cook and stir over low heat until the gelatin dissolves.

3.    Add to the berries, stir well and chill until the mixture begins to thicken.

4.    Beat egg whites until stiff and fold in.

5.    Pour into the pie shell. Garnish with whole berries.  Chill until set.

Strawberry Chiffon Pie