Rhubarb Custard Pie

It's rhubarb season. And we LOVE rhubarb. Since it's in season for only a brief period of time I cherish it. Since as far as I can remember, my mum would make this rhubarb custard pie each spring. Mmm. It's one of my two favourite pies (my other being blueberry glazed pie).

I was able to get my hands on a whole bunch of rhubarb from the farm this past weekend. I contemplated making a rhubarb crumble cake, perhaps a rhubarb galette, or maybe some rhubarb compote. But in the end I decided to stick with pie. Here's the recipe.

Rhubarb Custard Pie
(original source unknown)

Pâte brisée:
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon granulated white sugar
1 cup unsalted butter, chilled, and cut into 1 inch
1/4 to 1/2 cup ice water

Preheat the oven to 450F. In a food processor, whiz together flour, salt, and sugar until combined.

Cut up butter, and add to the flour etc. Process until the mixture looks like coarse meal.

Slowly add the water while running the food processor, and continue adding until the dough holds together when pinched. Don't process for more than 30 seconds.

Divide the dough in two, and with your hands form each section into a disc. Wrap in saran wrap and place in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. You only need one disc for a pie, so you can freeze the extra one and use it at a later date.

Pie Filling:
3 eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 tbsp flour
2 tbsp butter
4 cups of rhubarb, cut into 1/2 pieces

Separate the egg yolks and whites, putting the yolks in a large bowl and the egg whites in a small bowl. Set the bowl of egg whites aside for now. You'll eventually use them for the meringue.

Whisk together with the butter, sugar, and flour. 

Wash your lovely rhubarb stalks, and chop them up into 1/2'' pieces.

Add rhubarb to the egg-sugar-butter mixture and stir until combined. It'll be a little chunky at first, but it will become more liquidy/custardy as it sits while you deal with the pie crust.

Take your dough out of the fridge, and roll it out until it will fit into a 8'' or 9'' pie plate. Trim off any excess overhanging dough, tuck the remaining edge in so it's sitting on the rim of the pie plate, then use the tines of a fork to press the crust down. I sort of just winged this step. There are fancier and tidier ways to finish your edge, but I'm not a perfectionist. I just want to eat the pie already!!

Pour the rhubarb mixture into the uncooked pie crust. Bake at 400F for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350F and bake for an additional 45 minutes.

Remove from oven, and allow to cool while you make the meringue. Turn the oven up to 450F.

Meringue:
3 egg whites
dash of salt
2 tbsp cold water
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup sugar

Beat water, salt, and egg whites on high until stiff peaks form. Add the baking powder, then slowly add the sugar while continuing to beat the mixture. Beat some more until stiff peaks form. Pile onto the pie, covering the whole thing all the way to the crust.

Put in the oven for 5-10 minutes, until the meringue starts to turn golden.

Et voila! RHUBARB CUSTARD PIE!

Real Bees!

It's no secret that we're big fans of bees over in these parts. Within the last couple of years, I personally have taken a great interest in beekeeping, and dream of one day having a backyard hive of my own. When our friend Brandi decided to put bees up on the farm that we all help out on, it was like a dream come true. I was lucky enough to help Brandi, along with our friend Sean, with her first ever honey harvest a couple of weeks ago.

Oh, and just a little sidenote before we get into it - Brandi is an actual descendant of Old MacDonald. As in, Old MacDonald had a farm. Ee i ee i o. Pretty perfect for a modern beekeeping farmer, no?

Brandi has two colonies up at the farm. The first one she got in the early Spring, and the second one she added mid-Summer. It's seemed as though it was a productive year for the bees, but being Brandi's first year she wasn't sure what to expect. The three of us got together on a rainy afternoon ready to work like worker bees.

After Brandi removed the honey supers from the hives and brought them to the barn, the next step was to remove the layer of beeswax that the bees cap the combs with once they are full of honey. We took turns doing this carefully with hot knives. You can buy high-tech beekeeping electric knives that stay continually hot, but a kettle full of boiling water did the trick well enough for us.

The frames were then put into the extractor that Brandi borrowed from her fellow beekeeper friend Jess. An extractor works by placing the frames within a barrel, and then spinning them around. This removes the honey by flinging it out and allowing it to collect at the bottom of the barrel, while doing no damage to the frames so that they can be used again in the hive.

While we watched the motor running on the extractor, Sean (owner of  Downtown Bike Hounds, and a serious bike enthusiast) came up with the incredible idea of making our own extractor powered by the pedals of a bike. Maybe next year that's how we'll be doing things.

And then liquid gold poured out when we opened the spigot at the bottom of the extractor drum.

At this point, the honey is still full of small bits of wax and other debris, so it is poured into food grade containers with very fine filters, and is left to drip drip drip slowly over a period of days. It was impossible for us not to sample the goods at this point, and man oh man, I've never had better honey in my life. Sweet and floral and fragrant. We wanted to bathe in it.

Between her two hives, Brandi ended up with around 12 gallons of honey from her harvest. Not too shabby! And really, the bees did most of the work! I'm so grateful to Brandi for letting me help out and learn some of the ropes of harvesting honey. Now all I have to do is convince my husband to let me put that (illegal) backyard hive in our yard.

Pea Preparation

Several weeks ago a few of us were able to get up to the farm, and after an evening of much needed weeding we rewarded ourselves by pick some peas. We ended up with so many peas (about a bushel and a half) that I decided to take the opportunity to bring a little over half a bushel home to freeze some so that we could have tasty peas all year round.

First you need to shuck the peas. We did this while watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 to get ready to see Part 2. I have to say that fresh peas might be a better movie snack than popcorn.

To properly prepare peas for freezing (and most other vegetables and fruit) they have to be blanched to kill the enzyme that causes the peas to lose their freshness. To blanch the peas they need to be submerged in boiling water for 90 seconds.

I put a few handfuls of peas into a metal steaming basket to contain them so that I didn’t have to chase the loose peas around with a slotted spoon in a boiling pot of water.

Once the peas had been in the boiling water for 90 seconds I dropped the basket into a bowl of cold water to stop the cooking process.

After cooling in the first bowl of water for about 30 seconds I would dump the peas out of the basket into a second bowl of cold water. I would keep the peas here until the next batch of peas had come out of the boiling water.

The peas would then be poured into a strainer, then onto a paper towel to blot off the excess water.

(To me it looks like the peas are in the shape of North America, anyone else see that?)

Once the peas have been dried off they can be spread out on to a cookie sheet to freeze. When the peas have frozen solid they can be collected into sealable container. Freezing them this way allows the peas freeze separately, not stuck to their neighbour so you can take as many as you want to add to your meal.

I had so many peas that I had to make a second layer on both my cookie sheets with tin foil.

How do you use your peas throughout the year?

photos by Courtney Lakin

Our Roots, Part IV: The Farm

Two summers ago, a group of us were toying with the idea of starting a shared vegetable garden somewhere in the downtown area. That’s when our good pal Gary stepped in and offered up a much better suggestion: his parent’s farm had an acre of land that we could use, just outside of the city. That summer, The Farm was born.

The Farm belongs to the Buttrums, a family of farmers (and friends) who have been at the Hamilton Farmers’ Market for seven generations, since the 1880’s. Gary’s parents run the farm and sell their produce at the market. Squash, potatoes and tomatoes are their key crops, but they have grown all sorts of vegetables over the years. When they offered us up some of their land, we were beyond thrilled.

The first summer, we cleared the back acre of land up at the farm and planted our crops as quickly as we could. It was already late May by the time we started farming, so we didn’t have a lot of planning time. We started heading up a few days a week to plant seeds, move rocks, weed, weed some more, and finally, harvest. When the harvest came, it was bountiful. It was also a little crazy. Beans sprouted up faster that we could possibly pick them, and by the time the frost came, we probably had about 300 heads of cabbage that we needed to find homes for. Some of the excess went to the Hamilton Farmers’ Market, but even then we still had too much.

With the help of Gary and his parents, we’ve learned a lot about farming since that first summer, and we’re still learning. Last year more friends came up to the farm, and we expanded our farming area to cover the other five acres of farm land owned by the Buttrums. We helped farm their key market crops, and in return we got to use the remaining land for delicious tomatoes, beets, potatoes, hot peppers, onions, carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, zucchini and more.

It’s hard, but rewarding work. Most of the weeding takes place on your hands and knees, so you often leave the farm a little worse for wear. Still, when the weather is nice, or the sun starts setting, I can’t think of a better place to be. It’s so satisfying to grown your own food and know exactly where it came from, and what (if anything) went into it. It’s a rewarding experience to get back to the basics, and become part of something so sustainable.

We don’t use any chemicals at the farm, and even though we prefer it that way, sometimes the crops suffer as a result. Last year these pesky Colorado Potato Beetles pretty much wiped out our supply of potatoes, and most of the tomatoes suffered from a blight. It’s a small price to pay for knowing we are eating natural, pesticide-free food.

Last summer we grew a little of everything you could possibly think of, and we did our very best to minimize any waste. We planted in phases so that not all the crops were ready at once, and we had a steady system of weeding and harvesting going on all summer. We hosted canning parties, made lots of soups and stews, and organized an outdoor market outside of White Elephant during the art crawls. Everyone from the farm volunteered to help harvest & transport the vegetables, and set up the stand outside of the shop. Hollie’s sister Nikki was often the face of the market stand, and she did an amazing job.

This summer we are seriously stepping up with the farm. We have a ton of new friends who are interested in coming up, and we are taking this job seriously. Gary has appointed Hollie as Farm Manager, so we have someone to help organize and keep us all on track. We’re growing new crops, and bringing in something we are all really excited about: BEES. Some new friends are bringing their 3rd generation beekeeper experience to the farm this summer, and we’ll have our very first hives.

We’re also planning to plant a natural dye garden, full of Madder, Indigo, Goldenrod, Hollyhock and more. There’s going to be a 6 x 20 foot natural dye garden, so you can expect lots of Beehive dyeing projects in the future. The weather is just starting to warm up here in Hamilton, and farming has been on everyone’s minds. I can’t wait to get back out there and get started on all the new ideas and projects we have planned, and I’m sure you’ll hear a lot about it this summer on the Beehive blog. Photos courtesy of Jane, Hollie and Gary Buttrum

Our Roots, Part I: Summer Pickle Bees

To help you become better acquainted with the Beehive Craft Collective, over the next few weeks we will be telling you our story - starting with some of the common interests and activities that first drew us together. Many of us Bees share an interest in food - eating, cooking, baking, and waxing poetic over it. This includes finding enjoyment in growing the food ourselves. Some of us, like me, were born in the vegetable patch, and grew up close to our food. For others, local food has become an important part of our lives, and who can imagine a source nearer than the bean you pick with your own hands? For the last couple of years, through the generosity our friend Gary Buttrum and his family, some of us have been lucky enough to have the chance to grown our own. You will no doubt hear more about the farm as you get to know us, but to read more about it, please see Hollie and Jane's reports of farming adventures. This last summer, we found ourselves with an over-abundance of beans, cucumbers and zucchini. There is something quite satisfying in rising from picking row upon row of beans with a full bushel basket of waxy yellow beauties. Yet, after the end of the picking session finds you with more beans than can be eaten fresh and taken to market, what to do?

Why, have a pickling party, of course! Many hands make light work. Many of us pickle and preserve on our own, but we had so many vegetables, and also wanted to share the pickling bounty with our non-pickling farm friends. So Hollie and I gathered together a group of like-minded ladies, and last year we had two pickling parties, which we have come to call Pickle Bees. A working 'Bee' is a gathering of peers to accomplish a task, making social and enjoyable what otherwise might be a tedious chore. I think this is the perfect description of our bees.

The Pickle Bees were also an easy way to try an untested recipe. We'd never tried making dilled beans or relish, and ending up with one or two jars of a new pickle is much better than been stuck with six jars of an unloved preserve. In the end, all the recipes turned out great, and were delicious. Together we ended up with dozens of jars of dill pickles, dill beans and zucchini relish. We shared the jars amongst the the Pickle Bee attendees, and gave the remaining jars to our farming friends.

This year I look forward to a spring and summer of planting, weeding (that's a lie, as I detest weeding), harvesting, and marketing, but what I most relish is the cooking, pickling, preserving, jamming and baking, and the eating, of course. It will be an even more delicious season in the company of wonderful friends.  

Photos courtesy of Jesse Senko, Hollie and Kate