My rhubarb plant really got huge this year. I was so busy with other gardening chores, I didn't end up using a great deal of it, or even chopping a lot up to freeze. I did make a rhubarb crisp, and then intended to make a strawberry rhubarb pie. However, I discovered I didn't have enough lard thawed for the crust and didn't want to wait for more to thaw, so I just made another crisp, substituting 2 cups of strawberries for 2 cups of rhubarb.
This is how the finished product looked. Nobody complained that it wasn't a pie after all.
A neighbor gave me a recipe for Rhubarb BBQ sauce. I had never heard of such a thing, but it was a good way to use up rhubarb. I made a double batch, which required 16 cups of chopped rhubarb.
I promptly used one jar to make BBQ pork ribs, and it was a big hit! But no photos were taken of that particular dish.
With an abundance of raspberries in our patch, I've been trying to think up things to do with them besides freeze them for later. When it's summer and I'm busy in the garden and it's hot outside, I'd rather not do much baking. But I did bake some raspberry muffins one day when it was cooler. Then I thought about raspberry chiffon pie! I have an excellent recipe in my old Farm Journal Pie Cookbook, which I will include at the end.
First, I prepared a 9" baked pie shell. That didn't heat up the kitchen for very long. It came out looking a bit warped, as usual, but nobody minds.
Next, I put the gelatin in water to soften while I cooked the egg yolks, lemon juice, and sugar in a saucepan.
The third step was to run the raspberries through the Foley food mill to make a puree.
And here's the puree in a bowl.
After the puree and the cooked egg mixture had been combined and chilled, it was time to beat the egg whites and whip the cream. This meant dirtying both my stand mixer and electric hand mixer, of course. Oh well.
When I lifted the hand mixer, the egg whites looked like this. Hmmm.
I used coconut cream instead of heavy whipping cream so the dairy-sensitive family member could have some pie. The can of coconut cream should have been refrigerated overnight, but I didn't know the previous evening that pie was going to happen the next day. So it just got a little time in the freezer while I did the other steps, and I hoped for the best. It didn't whip up really well, but I put it all together and into the pie shell anyway.
The finished product was quite acceptable! The texture was a little different than it would have been with dairy whipping cream, but it wasn't bad at all.
The recipe suggests using whole raspberries as a garnish, but they just sat there looking like an afterthought that could fall off at any moment. Perhaps if I had saved some of the whipped coconut cream like the recipe says to do, and put the raspberries on top of that, it would have worked out better. But I ended up putting all of the whipped coconut cream into the pie, because it didn't look like something I'd want to use on top of the pie.
About a week later, I drove to my sister's house in Montana to lend a hand while her husband recovered from a hospital stay. She, too, has an abundance of raspberries in her garden. I picked quite a heap of them, and made a double batch of that same pie filling at her house, only I just spread it out in a large casserole dish and skipped the crust. I used regular whipping cream, and the texture was much better. I didn't think about taking a photo until we had eaten some of it.
It was such a big pan full, my sister and I agreed it would be best to cut it into serving size portions and freeze it that way for future consumption. So I did that.
Here is the recipe, taken from the Farm Journal's Complete Pie Cookbook, copyright 1965. I am still at my sister's house, but she has the exact same cookbook, so I am using her copy:
Fresh Raspberry Chiffon Pie
Baked 9" pie shell
1 1/2 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1/4 C. water
4 eggs, separated
1 T. lemon juice
3/4 C. sugar, divided
2 pts. fresh raspberries
1/8 tsp. salt
3/4 C. heavy cream, whipped
Soften gelatin in cold water.
Combine egg yolks, lemon juice and 1/2 C. sugar in small saucepan. Heat slowly, stirring constantly, until mixture is thickened slightly, and coats the back of a metal spoon. Remove from heat and add softened gelatin to the hot mixture; stir to dissolve.
Put 1 1/2 pints raspberries through a sieve to make a puree (you should have 1 cup of puree). Stir into gelatin mixture and cool until it mounds slightly when dropped from a spoon. (Do not let it get too firm.)
Beat egg whites with salt until frothy. Gradually beat in remaining 1/4 C. sugar and continue beating until meringue is stiff and shiny, but not dry.
Fold into raspberry mixture along with whipped cream, reserving about one third of the whipped cream. Pour into pie shell and chill a few hours.
To serve, decorate with the remaining whipped cream and berries.