I recently realized that I haven't posted a recipe on Frost Street in over six months. That hardly seems right. And since I recently found these fresh local strawberries and rhubarb at Fairway, it seemed right to do a short recipe post on the perennial Frost Street staple: pie.

The end of the rhubarb season generally runs into the beginning of the strawberry season, which is probably why these plants always seem to go together in a pie. Their flavors match pretty well too; the sourness of rhubarb requires a lot of sugar and some contrasting flavor notes to make it enjoyable, and fresh ripe strawberries provide both. Conversely, delicate strawberries don't stand up to well to the heat of baking , but rhubarb contributes both body and a sour background flavor base that allows their sweetness and unique aromatic characteristics to shine.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients:

For the Crust:

• 1/4 lb. Lard, chilled
• 4 tbsp. (half a stick) unsalted butter, chilled
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/4 cup water
• ice

For the Filling:

• 1 quart (2 pints) fresh strawberries
• 1 lb. rhubarb stalks
• 1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 3 tbsp corn starch
• 2 tbsp. butter

Procedure:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
2. Stir the salt into the water until dissolved, then add a few cubes of ice. Let stand to chill.
3. Cut the lard and butter into half-inch cubes and place them in a chilled bowl. Add the flour and roll the chunks of fat in the flour with your fingertips, mixing them and breaking them up until the flour looks like wet sand and there are a few chunks of fat of varying size remaining interspersed in the flour.
4. Drizzle half the ice water over the flour and stir it in gently with a fork. Try to bring the dough together with your hands. If it won't hold together, keep drizzling in ice water and stirring it in until the dough is just moist enough to hold together. Gather the dough into a ball, place it in a plastic bag, and put it in the refrigerator for at least a half hour.
5. Meanwhile, wash and dry the rhubarb and trim off the ends (the leaves are poisonous; the roots are tough), and cut the stalks into one-inch chunks. Wash and dry the strawberries, hull them and halve them, and add them to the rhubarb. Mix in the sugar (using more or less depending on the sweetness of the strawberries) and the cornstarch, and toss all the ingredients together. Let the filling stand at room temperature for at least twenty minutes, stirring occasionally.
6. Remove the crust dough from the refrigerator and let it stand at room temperature for a few minutes to soften. Roll it out on a floured surface to a thickness of about 1/8 inch. Gently line a greased pie pan with the dough, and cut away any excess, leaving an overhang of about 1/2 inch. Collect the scraps and refrigerate them; they can be re-rolled and used to garnish the top of the pie (for example, in a lattice pattern) or saved for another use.
7. Flute the edge of the pie using your fingertips, for example by pinching the overhang with your thumb on one side and your index and middle fingers straddling your thumb on the other side, to create an offset pattern. If the dough gets warm and too soft to work with, refrigerate it for twenty minutes then continue.
8. Stir the filling one last time and pour it into the pie crust. Cut the 2 tbsp. butter into small knobs and dot it over the filling. If you are using your scraps of pie dough to garnish the top of the pie, do so now.
9. Put the pie pan on a baking sheet with raised sides (to catch any bubbling over) and place it in the center rack of the preheated oven. Bake at 375 degrees for 30-40 minutes or until the filling has boiled and the crust is golden brown. Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before serving. Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a sprig of mint.