Here’s something you may have picked up on about yours truly. I get obsessed with certain flavors. Currently, that would be lemon. Hence, the lemon infused pasta from last week. I hope you enjoyed that one. We found it perfectly appropriate for summer. This week, I’m still into lemon. I baked it into my strawberry pie along with some balsamic vinegar, another of my loves, and my oh my, you can be the judge at your place, but it got rave reviews at mine! As a matter of fact, if my beloved farmer didn’t already love me, I think he would’ve fallen hard.

Strawberry Lemon Pie with Balsamic Vinegar

2 refrigerated pie crusts
2 pounds of strawberries, cleaned, hulled and sliced
The fruit of two lemons
1 cup white sugar
1-2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
¼ cup cornstarch
Pinch of salt
1 egg white

I’m using a couple of refrigerated pie crusts. A) to cut down time in the kitchen and B) because they’re delicious and C) because I can. Feel free to make your own pie crusts if your little heart prefers them.

I’ve got the oven preheating at 350 degrees. I’ve prepared our strawberries by washing, hulling, and slicing them. I’ve prepared two lemons by scrubbing them clean, slicing them as thin as possible, and then removing the lemon rinds. Note: You can even leave the rinds on if your people like that sort of thing. Some people do. Me and mine don’t.

Now we’ll going to combine our berries and lemons with a cup of sugar, a ¼ cup of cornstarch, a tablespoon or so of balsamic vinegar, and a dash of salt. We’ll toss our fruit and pour it into our prepared but uncooked pie crust. I’m going to lay out this second refrigerated pie crust, cut it into strips and form a rustic basket weave across the top. Pstt… when you aren’t shooing for perfection, and I never am, just describe your masterpiece as rustic. It covers a multitude of shortcomings!

Before placing this in the oven we’ll combine an egg white with a teaspoon or so of water and brush it across our pie crust. Then we’ll set the pie on a foil-lined baking sheet. Unless, of course, you enjoy cleaning the oven when all of that goodness tries to bubble up and over the edges. Bake about 1 and ½ hours or until your pie is that perfect shade of brown you’re after. Let it cook a bit before slicing and it will hold together, but good luck with that. OH, and we top ours with ice cream! YUM!