Rhubarb Pie without the Pearls

I'm feeling much friskier today so I am the victim of being easily influenced by others. Last week my mother told me about baking herself a rhubarb pie. Then I saw Julie Julia. Now I've just put my own rhubarb pie in the oven! Oh yes. But it hasn't been as easy as one would think. Here's my story.

I mentioned during breakfast that a rhubarb pie would be nice. Taylor jumped right on that band wagon. So after breakfast we went to the local farm stand and picked up some great looking rhubarb. Young, slender stalks which had a nice dark pink coloring.

Now, the question of which recipe? My mother found hers on the internet, but I was more in the mood to pour through cook books, so I took about 6 of them out onto the patio, put my foot on my footstool, made room for Bob, and started perusing. Julia Child didn't have a recipe. Several recipes were similar, and quite simple. Then I came upon the recipe in The New Best Recipes Cookbook, put out by Cook's Illustrated. They, of course have a big long article before the recipe convincing me that theirs is the only decent recipe in the world. I said I was easily influenced. And now I'm off and running (or I should say cooking).

One of the first rules of knitting is read the instructions and that is also true for cooking. After reading the recipe, I discovered that I didn't have all the ingredients, but Taylor was more than willing to go out for strawberries, one orange and arrowroot. The next item on my agenda was to prepare the work surfaces. In my case that meant removing all the miscellaneous crap that had piled onto the kitchen counters over the past 2 ½ weeks. Mail, dog leash, box of wine, books, newspapers all had to go, and I cleaned the surface as well. Last, I had to prepare myself. I selected a nice apron with Pike Place Market 2003 on the front, tied it in front and added a clean kitchen towel, folded over at my waist – just like Julie and Julia! I wanted to add my pearls but thought going up the stairs on my foot would be overkill. When I asked Taylor to go fetch them for me, he said he'd rather just pour me a glass of wine. Next time I'm wearing pearls.

Finally, it was time to cook. I started with the crust. I have a pretty good, reliable recipe that I always use, but The New Best Recipes says theirs is better, so I, against my better judgment, followed the instructions for theirs. It involves 1 ½ cubes of butter and ½ cup of shortening!!!!!!!!!!!! Egads. The fat and caloric content!!! Oh well, neither Julie nor Julia seemed to worry about fat, so I'm not worrying about it either, even though I haven't done a lick of exercise since spraining my ankle.

With the pie crust dough chilling in the refrigerator, I moved on to the filling. Slicing rhubarb and quartering strawberries were a pleasure made more so by my new Cutco knives. Of course, by now the caffeine from breakfast coffee, and diet coke Taylor brought back from his grocery store run, kicked in so I was in the zone. When I started sautéing the rhubarb, Taylor sounded a little concerned but he knew to leave me alone. I continued on, following directions step by step. I rolled the crust, chilled the sautéd rhubarb, grated the orange peel, preheated the oven, gently added the filling, and crimped top and bottom crusts. I was about to brush the top with my egg white/sugar mixture when I reread the instructions. Oops! I thought the instructions said, add 1 T sugar to the egg white, mix, and paint over the pie crust. How I knew to reread I don't know, but the instructions actually said, "Brush the top of the crust with the egg white and sprinkle evenly with the remaining 1 tablespoon sugar." How easy it is to misread instructions. I toyed with the idea of painting on my egg white/sugar mixture, but quickly talked myself out of it. I dumped it in the sink, got a fresh egg white and followed the instructions. Yeah me.

Finally, I put the pie in the oven. I started cleaning and couldn't wait to see, and taste, the final product. I knew I needed to pay attention to the baking because I was going to have to change temperature in the oven from time to time. When the crust started to smell done I went to the oven and checked – oh my, it was already dark brown and I was barely into the time it needed to bake. Back to the instructions. Ah yes, I neglected to turn the temperature down from 500 to 375 when I put the pie in, in the first place. What to do? I wasn't about to throw this out, so I lowered the temp immediately to 350 and quickly made a little foil collar to place on the crust to keep the edges from burning (I saw this idea in the instructions for pie crust).

So, I made it pretty much through to the end before goofing up in the instruction department. This seems to be an issue for me whether I'm knitting or cooking. I do think Julia would have been kind about it, if I were her student though…don't you? I have no idea how it's going to taste, but I suspect it will be spectacular. Come on over and have a slice.

(Note the apron and the dish towel. The pearls are in the drawer.)

Elizabeth Julia

Last night Taylor and I were lucky enough to snag two free tickets to a sneak preview of the new movie Julie Julia. It's about a young woman, Julie, who cooks her way through every single recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year. As she slices and dices Julie blogs because what she really wants to be is a writer. She happens to like cooking so it becomes her subject. While Julie is cooking herself and her husband into a frenzy a second story is running - the life of Julia Child and how she happened to learn to cook and to write her first cookbook.

I absolutely loved the movie. It was so uplifting, funny, and touching. It also reminded me of me, and all my fellow bloggers who write about knitting. What's the connection, you ask? The connection is Julia Child and Elizabeth Zimmerman. Julia is to French cooking, as Elizabeth is to knitting. Just like Julie prepared every one of Julia's dishes, I have thought about knitting every one of Elizabeth's patterns. I don't think the movie has inspired me enough to do this but I have had the thought, and I do write a blog about what I do knit. I just bet there are some knitters out their who have knit their way through the Knitters Almanac, and possibly blogged about it. I know there are bloggers who have developed large followings of readers, as Julie eventually did when writing about Julia. Perhaps I found this so charming because I recognized the process of Julie and Julia from a knitter's perspective.

So how, exactly are Julia and Elizabeth alike? They each have a passion. Both married really nice men, who supported their endeavors even though cooking and knitting weren't exactly the kind of activities women's libbers approved of in the years of the 60s and beyond. They both wrote books, shared their knowledge through teaching, and had TV shows long before programs about food, crafts, etc became commonplace. I think they both had amazing senses of humor as is evident in their writing and TV performances. The two of them made mistakes and realized their viewers/readers also would make mistakes. They made us comfortable with being human.They made it "okay" to enjoy some of the "womanly" crafts.

And how are all us bloggers like Julia? That's pretty obvious I think. We have a passion for our knitting and we vent our frustrations, and pat ourselves on the back through our writing. We get ideas for new projects, new techniques, designers and products from reading each others blogs. Julie was hoping to become a published writer. I think most of us aren't that ambitious, but blogging helps sort out our thoughts about something we love.

Whether you're a cook, a knitter, or a blogger I hope you'll see this movie. Even my husband, who loves to eat, only cooks occasionally, and tolerates my knitting, enjoyed the movie. As Julia and Elizabeth always said,

"Bon Appetit" and "Good Knitting"