Anthony Lombardi

I finally got around to making something with rhubarb, and boy was it worth it. I’ve always liked rhubarb in jams and desserts. Sometimes I wonder if it’s really a coincidence that it goes well with strawberry, which happens to be the same color. I wonder if whatever causes the color also causes them to taste well together. I cheated slightly by using frozen pre-cut rhubarb (is it even in season right now?) that I got from Whole Foods. It’s great what you can get frozen these days. Often times frozen fruit is as good if not better than fresh because they’re able to freeze it at the utmost peak of ripeness.

The crust was perfectly flaky and tender. It was very quick to put together too, with just a few pulses of all the ingredients in my food processor. Something that may have provided the superior texture is that the butter pieces were actually quite small. When they say in books to leave “pea size” chunks of butter, they really mean that, and no larger. If they’re larger you end up using too much water to get the dough to come together well, leading to a tougher dough since flour and water creates gluten, which then creates a tougher crust. Actually, now that I look at the recipe it turns out there’s a higher butter to flour ratio than other recipes I’ve tried (8 Tbps/cup rather than 6 Tbsp/cup), so that probably helps too. Once again, more butter equals more better!