Explanation Separates us from Astonishment.
Everyone wants an explanation. Sometimes there isn’t an explanation. This is life. We can expect some answers and sometimes we think there might be an answer and later on we find out those answers aren’t the truth or it is much more sinister. Put on “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears and come to terms with the fact that some things are made up as we go along. Are you hungry? Of course you are. Let’s make rhubarb sheet pie. Is it a pie? Is it a cake? Is it a crumble? I can promise you that it is delicious. Women in my family can promise you a few things. They will drive you a little crazy with their stubborn strong-willed nature. They will have opinions about someone’s behaviour at a wedding a few years ago. And they will never let you starve. This recipe comes from them. This dish will make sure you will not starve. It is early Spring and there is rhubarb in the garden and that means a slightly new flavour after a long winter of the same apples and oranges. The taste buds need a reminder that soon there might be other fruits. Rhubarb doesn’t make sense. It is this vegetable that grows anywhere in a semi-neglected state like a fifth child in a family of eight. Its leaves would make you very sick but these stalks are potentially tasty. Why? How? It doesn’t need to explain itself to you. Just know that it has a pretty impressive history. Once upon a time it was very expensive and traded at a higher price than cinnamon and saffron. (It is kind of like when you know some nice old sort who is a little odd and it turns out they are descended from some weird old aristocratic family that used to hang out with Charlemagne and owned a part of Belgium, and they are still technically the prince of a duchy in what is now Germany. But they have a patched coat.) Then sugar became cheap and rhubarb became common like the rest of us. “I was rare and highly prized… then I got involved with this stuff. Slavery, colonizing, and everyone was hooked. It was a weird scene.”
To explain this recipe is simple. When I look at the family recipe card it assumes you know what you are doing in life. Which is a complete and utter lie but that doesn’t stop us most of the time. Get out a 9x13 pan. And a bowl. We are going to do our best impression of muddling through life and make sure there is something for dessert. In your bowl you will mix together 1 ½ cups of flour, 1.5 tsp of sugar, ½ cup of oil, and 2 Tbs of milk. Simple. Yes? Then you press it into the pan. Just put your hands to work and pat it down and make it fairly even. That is one pleasure in life -finding that things aren’t such a bother. This was a simple mess. Then in that same bowl (because we shouldn’t make things a bigger mess.) you mix together the filling. 1 ½ cups of sugar, 2 Tb of flour, 2 Tbs of butter, a dash of salt, a splash of almond extract, and an egg. Add in about 4 cups of diced rhubarb. It will be wet and sticky. Okay so there might be a slight mess but you expected that right? Pour that over the first layer. Finally you clean out that bowl and dry it and make the crumb topping. ½ cup of sugar ½ cup of flour, and 2 Tbs of butter. Take your fork or pastry blender and mix it up until you have crumbs. Sprinkle over the filling. It should completely cover everything. Now I want to pause to talk about one other possible addition. In some parts of the United States there is a love of putting grated cheese on top of apple pie and letting it melt. There are those who find it appalling. And I understand that it might be too great a leap for the taste buds. Not everyone has their third eye open to such flavour combinations. I respect that. But you can also apply the same experience to this dish. It makes it kinda crispy and delicious. That sweet, salt and tart all at once. But again you need to do some serious meditation, work through some psychic baggage, and be in a place where non-attachment is not a terrifying practice to take on. Or maybe you just need to have midwestern roots. (if you aren’t ready, just leave the cheese off.)
Bake this dish at 180/375F for about 40–50 minutes. Let it sit awhile and think about things like the fact that surgeons weren’t washing their hands or using gloves until just over one hundred years ago and regularly killing people, or that we didn’t get good photographic evidence of the existence of a giant squid until a few years ago. Sometimes we just have to wait for explanations. And while we wait we make something to eat. Enjoy this rhubarb sheet pie. Maybe you will understand something better tomorrow. Or accept that you might not.
