summer food: strawberry-rhubarb crisp

I hope your Memorial Day weekend has been fantastic. We've been loving good weather, good friends & neighbors, good fun, good work, and some doggone good desserts. It is high rhubarb season here in the North Country, and the $6 worth of gorgeous red stalks I bought at the roadside stand could probably feed our entire neighborhood ad infinitum.

And so, I give you my neighbor Helen's uh-mazing recipe for Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp. Crisp topping, I'm finding, is an intensely personal preference -- some like it thinly spread and crunchy, like granola; some like it soft and fluffy, like a biscuit -- and a thousand variations in between. This crisp topping is a thick layer of rich and buttery goodness, slightly crisp when you first bite into it, then soft and crumbly as you keep chewing, a little like a huge, supersoft butter-oatmeal cookie. And the ratio of crisp to fruit is, in my opinion anyway, perfect -- nearly 1 to 1.

It's a lot of butter. To quote Rapunzel, Don't freak out! Totally worth it.

Helen's Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp

For the topping:
1 1/2 c flour
1 c packed brown sugar
1 c rolled oats
1 c butter, melted

For the fruit:
4 c diced strawberries
4 c diced rhubarb
1 c sugar

3 T flour

Preheat oven to 375 F. Combine dry ingredients for topping. Stir in melted butter. Stick it in the fridge while you prepare the fruit. Combine all the fruit ingredients, adjusting fruit ratios and sugar to taste. Pour fruit into a 9x12 (or similarly-sized -- I used an 8x10 and it was perfect) casserole dish. Crumble the topping over the fruit. Bake for 45 minutes, until richly golden brown and bubbly. Cool for a few hours before devouring.

Postscript: like this dessert wasn't enough... we made s'mores, too.