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I tend to celebrate National Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Day, which falls each year on June 9, because I love food holidays.<\/p>\n
I also celebrate this day because I adore dishes that pair sweet and tart. Strawberries in full season generally need no sugar. I can\u2019t say the same of rhubarb. The two ingredients thus complement each other to some extent.<\/p>\n
As food writer Judith Fertig has written, \u201cBitter rhubarb [makes] sunny-day strawberry face the realities of life\u2014and taste all the better for it.\u201d
\nThe strawberry-rhubarb combination also works because it is truly multicultural and international.<\/p>\n
Actually a vegetable rather than a fruit, rhubarb comes from a variety of countries but is perhaps best known as a Chinese import. It was originally used for medicinal purposes but eventually evolved into a food, helped out in large part by the widespread availability of sugar beginning in the 19th century.<\/p>\n
Ornamental strawberry plants have been found worldwide for millennia. According to the University of Vermont Agricultural Extension Service, the varieties of this berry that we consume came from the Americas, where indigenous peoples ate and cooked with strawberries long before Europeans arrived in the New World.<\/p>\n
Eventually, both the North American Virginia strawberry and the Chilean strawberry were brought to Europe. There the French and English bred them together to resemble what we think of as a strawberry today.<\/p>\n
Combining strawberries and rhubarb, then, is a truly global enterprise \u2026 not unlike the United States.<\/p>\n
Despite these positive traits, I don\u2019t find Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Day a perfect holiday.<\/p>\n
For one thing, it was obviously invented by someone in New Jersey or Connecticut, where strawberries come early in June.<\/p>\n
We are close to strawberry season here in western Massachusetts. Nevertheless, even in this very warm spring we haven\u2019t quite reached that season. At any rate, we haven\u2019t reached it in my hilly hometown of Hawley, where most seasons arrive late.<\/p>\n
I am also a little suspicious of this holiday because in my opinion the combination of strawberries and rhubarb is overblown.<\/p>\n
All too frequently, when I tell people that I adore rhubarb, they respond by telling me that they love strawberry-rhubarb pie but don\u2019t eat rhubarb in any other form.<\/p>\n
This is a tragic response. Rhubarb is a complex food. It is adaptable to many uses, both sweet and savory. To see it only as a complement to strawberries\u2014much as I love strawberries\u2014doesn\u2019t do it justice.<\/p>\n
This year for Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Day, I\u2019m actually preparing a relative of a pie rather than an actual pie: a strawberry-rhubarb cobbler. According to culinary librarian Lynne Oliver, who created the helpful source \u201cThe Food Timeline,\u201d cobblers were an American invention.<\/p>\n
\u201cAccording to food historians, cobbler \u2026 originated in the American West during the second half of the 19th century,\u201d she writes. \u201cNecessity required westward-bound pioneer cooks to adapt traditional oven-baked pie recipes to quick biscuit treats that could be cooked in Dutch ovens.\u201d<\/p>\n
I love the flexibility of a cobbler. It\u2019s easy to make (no rolling required!), and it doesn\u2019t have to look perfect. Indeed, the rough look of the dish is part of its charm. The named \u201ccobbler\u201d is purported to have come from this dessert\u2019s resemblance to cobbled streets.<\/p>\n
A cobbler also takes less time in the oven than a pie, a welcome characteristic on a warm day.<\/p>\n
Perhaps we can re-name June 9 Strawberry-Rhubarb Cobbler Day. Or perhaps this cobbler should be rewarded with a day of its own a little later in June. It\u2019s quite delicious.<\/p>\n
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