Rhubarb Chutney - Rhubarb Trilogy 2011 Part III

This post could easily have been called God’s Gift to Grilled Cheese. It isn’t though. That would mean that I think that chutney is just for grilled cheese sandwiches. I don’t. However, I do believe that grilled cheese sandwiches with chutney are one of the best things ever.

It is rhubarb time, as you know. It gets to the end of rhubarb season and, while I really, really love rhubarb, I start to wonder what to do with it besides making ice cream, crumble, sorbet, roasting it, making cheesecake with it, chopping it up and putting it in the freezer and so on.

This recipe makes just four cups but you could easily double or triple it if your canning and preserving sense has kicked in this early in the green season. If, like me, your’s hasn’t, this will keep in the fridge for at least a month. And, since it is barbecue season as well, you should have it used up in no time since you will need something for all those chops and sausages.

This is very uncomplicated and I wanted to keep the rhubarb taste there, as much as you can in a chutney anyway. I almost started adding some orange zest and cinnamon and stopped myself because this is summer chutney. We can talk about heavier, spicier chutneys at the end of the green season, right? 

This has a tiny bit of heat and a decent ginger kick. You could nicely freshen it up with some fresh cilantro/coriander and a little squeeze of lime just as you put it on the table with your grilled offering. With cheese, or grilled cheese, is it good just as it is.

Rhubarb Chutney

5 cups chopped rhubarb

2 cups diced onion

2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger

1 teaspoon ground coriander seed

1/4 teaspoon dried chili 

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

1 cup cider vinegar

Put all ingredients in a large pot. Slowly bring to a boil.

Reduce to a simmer. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the mixture has thickened and the liquid stops running in to the spoon tracks when you stir. This should take about 40 minutes.

Towards the end of the cooking, as the chutney thicken, you will need to stir more often.

Remove from heat and transfer to clean, dry jars. If you are ‘putting it up,’ you should process the jars in your canner for about ten minutes.

Your grilled cheese will never be the same again.

Rhubarb Ripple Ice Cream - Rhubarb Trilogy 2011 - Part II

Encouraged by David Lebovitz and his The Perfect Scoop, I have been making ice cream recently. I don’t love ice cream but I do have an ice cream maker which caused no small amount of post purchase depression. Consequently, I have fits and spurts of determination to use said machine.

Turning the pages and looking at perfectly scooped bowls of creamy indulgence, some beautifully swirled with bright fruit purées, I got to thinking about how uncommercial rhubarb is. Why is there no rhubarb ice cream next to the Black Raspberry Cheesecake and the Rum Raisin? I would stand up for the humble rhubarb and create the next ice cream sensation, Rhubarb Ripple.  

Instead of using the same recipe I have used for years for vanilla ice cream, I thought, since I was already reading it, I would use one from The Perfect Scoop. I followed the ingredient list perfectly and then forgot or didn’t bother to read the recipe instructions and carried on my way, happily ignoring the published directions and making it the way I would have made it anyhow. Regardless, it is perfect and delicious and not crazy sweet and the perfect foil for the rhubarb compote I was going to swirl through.

I would recommend, if you are really caught up in appearances, or taking pictures of your work for your blog, that while you split your vanilla bean, you watch what you are doing. Don’t watch your toddler scaling the kitchen cupboards or you will wind up with something like this.

Or, better yet, put down your knife and rescue your toddler from her tenuous toe hold on the edge of the drawer. In hindsight, you and your kitchen units will be happy you did.

Rhubarb Ripple Ice Cream (with some help from David Lebovitz and The Perfect Scoop)

Vanilla Ice Cream Base

1 cup (250 mL) whole milk

2 cups (500 mL) whipping cream

3/4 cup sugar

1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

6 large egg yolks

Pinch of salt

Rhubarb Ripple

4 cups chopped rhubarb

1 cup granulated sugar

4 tablespoons (1/4 cup) lemon juice

Scrape out the seeds of the vanilla bean and add to a large saucepan with the milk, cream and sugar. Gently bring to a boil. Immediately remove from heat.

Beat egg yolks and pinch of salt in a bowl and slowly pour about a third of the hot cream mixture into the yolks, whisking all the time. 

Slowly pour the yolk mixture back into the pan with the remaining cream whisking all the time.

Return to the stove and over a low heat, stirring constantly, cook until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. You can test by running a finger through the mixture on the back of the spoon. It should hold the path left by your finger.

Pour the mixture into a bowl and chill.

Put the rhubarb, sugar and lemon juice in another medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is thick enough to hold a track in the bottom of the pan when you run a spoon through it. As the mixture thickens, you will need to stir it more frequently to prevent burning. It will be thick and syrupy and will measure just shy of 1 1/2 cups when it is properly cooked down.

Pour into a bowl and chill.

Freeze the ice cream base in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. If you don’t have an ice cream maker you can try it the way I explained here.

Put a large metal mixing bowl in the freezer to chill while the ice cream is freezing.

When the ice cream is frozen, transfer it to chilled bowl and quickly fold/swirl/gently stir about 1 cup of the rhubarb mixture in. You don’t want to fully incorporate it it, you want to keep the rhubarb in swirl or ripples. You also want to do this as quickly as possible to prevent as much melting as you can.

Immediately transfer to the freezer to set up again.

Commercial, it may not be but delicious, there is no question.

Roasted Rhubarb - Rhubarb Trilogy 2011 Part I

As I mentioned here, what seems like only a few days ago but in reality is nearly a month, rhubarb and strawberry season was underway on a recent visit to England.

It was on this trip that Poppy re-discovered Eton Mess and labelled it as the best thing in the world. So good, it was, and is still, requested at the faintest whiff of a strawberry.  

After our first Cornish lane experience in a good two years, following signs promising the first fresh strawberries of the year, I was a little shaky. We unbuckled and made our way up the path. I was worried the berries would be sold out or, even worse, Spanish. Poppy was worried the farmer would be in the fields, unable to be found to sell his or her goods. Tilly was just happy to be unbuckled from the sick making journey to get there.

Lucky day, the farmer was in her shop and had flats of huge, juicy strawberries just in from their very own tunnels, flanked by stalks and stalks of ruby red rhubarb, begging to join our berries.

Normally, without the prospect of Eton Mess, Poppy would be all over a nice bunch of rhubarb. The berries and thoughts of cream and meringue were too much though and she made me promise, promise, promise that if we got rhubarb too, I could not mix it in thereby destroying everything an Eton Mess is supposed to be.

I didn’t mix it in, but I did put it on top. And, then I put it on top of muesli and yogurt in the morning and then on top of ice cream and then, I thought some pork, roast or chops, would benefit hugely from a few bits of this on top and a sprinkling of sea salt. Or, I thought, maybe a nice wedge of camembert or a bit of goat cheese and some oat cakes would be a nice medium. What I am trying to say is that there isn’t a whole lot that I don’t think this would be really good with. 

When you roast these, you’ll find they start to look a ‘little splody’, meaning they have almost burst their skins. That is fine. As the rhubarb cools, it will firm up and then you can move it around gently.

Roasted Rhubarb

7 big stalks of rhubarb washed and cut into 3-inch pieces

3/4 cups sugar

Preheat oven to 375ºF. If you have a convection oven, or fan in your oven, I would use it. If not, you may need to increase the cooking time. 

Line a baking sheet with parchment.

Toss the pieces of rhubarb in the sugar and arrange them on the baking sheet. Sprinkle the sugar that is left behind over them.

Bake for about 20 minutes, checking often, until they look like they are bursting and the edges have started to brown.

Remove from oven and cool. Transfer to a container or plate, reserving any juices for drizzling.

Use them to top Eton Mess, or muesli or yogurt or cheese or meat. You get the idea.

It's a Hard Life

In the past, you know those very few times I remembered to actually do it, Recipeless Wednesday was a photo and just a photo. While all this travel, as I have discovered, leaves little time for anything other than tea, I thought at least I could take pictures and tell you a bit about it. Luckily, the daughters and I have being very well cared for. Meals and laundry and comfy beds abound.

I could use a little more wi-fi access to the interweb, all available at the cafe down the road but the likelihood of accompishing anything other than a MacBook swimming in spilled hot chocolate is slim. My less optimistic visions of the mayhem involve Tilly jumping across the tables, lattes and cappuccinos spilling every which way as she shouts, 'Mine, mine, mine,' wielding a spoon reaching for the chocolate sprinkles of strangers and other terrified small children.

We started out on a high note, with our very own fashion dos and don'ts on Wills' and Kate's big day. We decided that hats are back unless, of course, they are really just nude coloured fancy Minnie Mouse ears. Not sure anyone could pull that/those off. All this royal telly watching with cups of tea to fuel the six am start.

Then we enjoyed an amazing day here where we, and our cupcake smeared gaggle of cousins, didn't venture past the dining room but, after a quick internet squizz, I am determined to go back for longer than an afternoon. We were treated to a Royal Wedding Tea Party complete with wedding cake and, more importantly, Pimm's. It was all served in idyllic English surrounds on a day straight out of July. After tea and cakes and little cucumber sandwiches delivered to the garden by icing-wired offspring, I almost couldn't bear the thought of returning to bathe and put to bed my children.

Then, there was more tea, and more cake, in the form of Annabel's Marmalade Cake, recipe and more children happily playing together while their mothers determined the best and worst dressed. I will post this in due time. I am starting to worry that this will become a blog about delicious things to eat with a cup of tea and, consequently, I'll need to let my trousers out.

Later that week, we had coffee with Rosie in Appleby. Her and her husband, Andrew, run The Courtyard Gallery. Stephen would have been most impressed with my restraint, Poppy's Deborah Hopson-Wolpe bowl almost got a mate and I could hear my cupboards crying out for Dartington pottery. Rosie makes the cakes for the gallery cafe so we were treated to a walnut cake and Tiffin squares and some other things that my children devoured before I got to try.

The next day we got to Cornwall, after a most stoic, if I may say so, eight hour car journey on my own with the girls. For that day, our gustatory experiences were enjoyed on a path of least resistance basis and somewhat limited by and to motorway service stations and coffee (lots of) with bribes of chocolate and sweets, like they hadn't been eating all that for the last ten days.

Crossing the Tamar, into Poppy's birthplace, as she'll all too readily explain, is a bit of a homecoming. It is our English home. Cornwall has brought us asparagus by the literal bucket load. Said asparagus gets itself drizzled in just shy of a bucket load of melted butter and a generous salt and peppering and calls itself supper. I have absolutely no problem with that.

Poppy has been begging for rhubarb, she has only had it once since we got here, and Eton Mess, that too has also only been had once. She has determined it is better than pavlova, it is essentially smooshed pavlova. Luckily for her, we managed to not get lost, stuck or drive the car into a hedge on some single track Cornish lanes leading to the farm shop where, as their sign four miles back promised, they had not only rhubarb, but fresh strawberries too.

We drove back to the grandparents' as fast as our out of practice Cornish lane navigating would allow and set about the yummiest of English puds and roasting our rhubarb. All the pictures and instructions to come in the first installment of 2011's Rhubarb Trilogy. All this, just as soon as I find some wi-fi.

2010 Rhubarb Trilogy Complete

Just for the record, I would like to say that not cooking is not so bad. We have the lovely and talented Janine making scrummy meals and that is just fine. She even leaves little unsalted bits for Tilly. Nice. 

Another bonus is that my hands are looking and feeling lovely. Poppy has stopped telling me that they feel like Daddy’s stubbly chin. I haven’t been washing and then working and then washing and then taking a photo and washing and...

I think the Caribbean humidity is helping too. As the fault lines in my bamboo countertop will tell you, winter is a dry season in Canada.

And, while it isn’t the best thing for your skin, a little sun helps appearances too.

Tomorrow I will no longer have an almost four year old. I had pictured a beautiful birthday cake post. It will have to wait until the at-home celebration. The request has been made for an ice cream cake, which sounds like disaster to me in 30º sunshine, but hey-ho, it is the request. And, because I certainly don’t feel up to cleaning up gallons of melted ice cream, we have ordered one from a place that says they can do it.

In the meantime, you will have to make due with rhubarb sorbet. I wish I had some right now. 

+++

In the process of making this, Little Daughter in sling ‘helping’, one of my favourite bowls was broken (the green one) and consequently, half of the rhubarb I had, the first fresh of the year, was riddled with tiny little shards of green pyrex. So, I couldn’t make as much as I had hoped. 

Big Daughter loved the stuff, rhubarb head she is. I thought it was nicely rhubarby but a little too sweet. I added two cups of syrup before tasting, amateur mistake really. I did think the texture was divine, silky smooth, easy to scoop after being in the freezer for a couple of days and completely ice crystal free. This is all made possible by the sugar syrup. My sorbets are usually harder and a little crystally because I am so mean with the sugar.

I have an ice cream maker. I don’t think my husband knows I bought it and he, somehow, still either hasn’t noticed, or maybe just doesn’t care what the big silver thing in the cupboard is. And, after two years, it is way too late to get cross about it.

You can make it in any ice cream maker, according to manufacturer’s instructions. Or, you can even still make it with just a freezer and a mixer. It takes longer and it may not be as silky smooth but it should still taste fresh and sweet and tart and just like more.

You will have extra sugar syrup, which you can keep in the fridge for ages to use next time you make sorbet or for sweetening iced tea and coffee.

This does need a bit of advance prep just because of the cooling and chilling required. So, if you wanted to have it for supper, I would start in the morning. If you have leftover syrup, it will still need a bit of time to chill the rhubarb before freezing it.

I passed the rhubarb puree through a sieve to remove any stringy bits which, it turns out, was totally unnecessary. If you don’t mind the risk of a few stringier bits, I would save the time and the washing up, and not bother.

When I get home, and strawberries come into season, we will be eating this with them. I am thinking it might be nice with some lime juice and zest instead of lemon and that ginger would add a great little zing. As I experiment, I’ll update here with the variations.

Rhubarb Sorbet (makes about 4 cups)

4 cups sugar

4 cups water

325 grams (11.3 ounces) chopped rhubarb  - I started with just shy of twice as much

4 tablespoons fresh lemon juice 

Make the syrup by bringing the sugar and water to a rolling boil. Remove from heat, cool and chill.

Cook the rhubarb with a few drops of water, covered and over low heat. Check often, you don’t want it to burn. As soon as the rhubarb breaks up, remove it from the heat and  puree. You can use a blender or a hand blender or a sieve and spoon if you don’t have either of those. This should yield a little over one cup of puree. Cool.

Mix the puree with 2 cups of the sugar syrup and the lemon juice. Chill until cold.

Chill and freeze in ice cream maker according to manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer to an irtight container and keep in freezer.

Or, put it in a bowl, your mixer bowl if you have a stand mixer, a glass or stainless bowl, if you don’t. Freeze it is partially frozen, maybe an inch or so in all the way around, around an hour.  Quickly remove it from the freezer and mix it with the mixer or whisk for a few seconds until it is all mixed together. Return to the freezer. Repeat freezing and whisking until it is getting firm. This will take a while. Sometimes, depending on your freezer and the temperature of your kitchen and any other number of temperature based variables, it could be as quick as three or four hours. It will be worth it.

This should keep in an airtight container for a couple of weeks, if it lasts that long.

New York Yogurt Cheesecake

I have been sitting on this post for ages. Just as I was about to write it, I noticed a cheesecake post on here, one of the best food blogs ever. So, I waited, wondering whether I should post it now, or wait, or just not worry about it. Then, I decided that it isn’t really the same. In fact, it is just as much a New York Yogurt Cake as it is a New York cheesecake. 

I have never made a cheesecake that I have been 100% totally and completely happy with. I don’t know whether it is because I don’t love cheesecake or whether the ones I make just aren’t that good.  I have made them in restaurants and the feedback has been nothing but positive so I like to assume that it is the former.  I have the Cook’s Illustrated All-Time Best Recipes magazine and it has a New York cheesecake recipe with, apparently, the best way to bake one so that it comes out uncracked. I couldn’t remember ever making a crackless cheesecake so I thought I would give it a go again. Er, a go in the sense that I would follow the baking instructions but to hell with the actual recipe which, in case you haven’t noticed yet, I am fairly hopeless at sticking to.  Not that I, or my hips, needed an entire cheesecake in the fridge. I was hoping for an occasion when, luckily, we were invited to supper at some friends’ and I offered to bring dessert. 

When I worked at Lolita’s Lust, we started playing around with using pressed yogurt instead of cream cheese in the cheesecake. If memory serves, we never got it really right and it was always just okay.  I wanted to try it out again, because I can convince myself that yogurt, no matter what the fat content, is better for me than cheese.

This turned out really well, save for the cracks, which despite following the New York method, were San Andreas-like in size. To be fair, it was probably either my not following the recipe or my gas oven, which I don’t have a thermometer in. The shame, the shame...

I’ve also used rhubarb here, another recipe to get you ready for the glut and, selflessly, used some from-far-away strawberries to test the recipe because when they are in season, this will be even better. The rhubarb sauce makes a tart layer and the macerated berries a sweet freshness to compliment it.

The New York method says you should put the cheesecake into a 500º oven for ten minutes and then turn the heat down to 200º for around another 1 1/2 hours. Cook’s Illustrated says that the cake should be 150º and that if it gets to 160º, it will crack. I think that is if it hasn’t already cracked due to recipe mucking about with or dodgy oven temperatures. I am certainly not going to argue with them because they have made hundreds of cheesecakes testing this out. 

I would also put a baking sheet underneath the pan in case some of the butter leaks out of the crust. I never remember. Then you won’t have to rescue your cake from an oven full of acrid burnt butter smoke like I did.

The texture was really light, for a cheesecake anyway, and, I think, the yogurt gives the cake a lighter and fresher taste. It is a little more work to make the pressed yogurt but you have the added benefit of being able to convince yourself it is almost good for you.

The recipe here is a combination of my mom’s, some hit and misses from Lolita’s and some playing around in the kitchen.

New York Yogurt Cheesecake with Rhubarb Sauce and Strawberries

Crust (I always seem to make too much)

10 ounces graham cracker crumbs (you can make them easily just by chucking the crackers in the food processor)  

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons melted butter

1/2 cup granulated sugar

Mix all three ingredients together. Press into the bottom and up the sides of a 10 inch springform pan. I used a smaller one and had extra crust and filling.

Cheesecake Filling

1 1/4 pounds pressed yogurt (you can find out how to make that here)

1 1/4 pounds cream cheese

5 large whole eggs

3 large egg yolks

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 teaspoons lemon zest

2 tablespoons all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 500º. 

Beat cream cheese, yogurt, flour and sugar together until smooth. Add zest and vanilla. Then add eggs and yolks gradually, scraping the bowl down often to avoid any unmixed bits of cheese.

Pour the mixture into the crust and bake for ten minutes.

Turn heat down to 200º for about an hour and a half, or use a thermometer and bake until cake reaches 150º. Or until it is just a little jiggly in the center.

Remove from the oven and loosen from the edges of the pan with a knife but leave it to cool in the pan. When cooled, refrigerate overnight.

Rhubarb Sauce

5 cups chopped rhubarb (I used some from the freezer and cooked from frozen, cooking time for fresh shouldn’t vary too much)

3/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon cornstarch

2 tablespoons water

In a large saucepan, put rhubarb and sugar and one tablespoon of water. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until rhubarb is softened, about fifteen minutes. Mix cornstarch with remaining tablespoon of water and stir into rhubarb. The mixture will go a little bit cloudy. Simmer and stir until the cloudiness is gone. Remove from heat and cool.

Macerated Strawberries

2 pounds strawberries give or take a few

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Wash, hull and slice strawberries. Mix with sugar and lemon juice and leave for a few minutes.

Pour the cooled rhubarb sauce onto the chilled cheesecake and return it to the fridge until you are ready to serve.

To serve, remove the cake from the springform pan and out it onto a cake plate. Top it with the macerated strawberries and slice. 

White Sand or Rhubarb?

My husband is gone. Not gone, gone. Just back to work gone. For the time being, work has taken him to right around here. For how long? No one really knows. Maybe a month, maybe three. It is hard to say. Which is fine with me. Really, it is just fine. I don't mind one bit. Not at all, really. It is okay. I'm fine and I just need to keep telling myself that over and over and over and...

In an effort to console myself, and to keep myself from singing this to Poppy and Tilly, I remember that Stephen's job allows me to keep the dream of my kitchen sporting this in green and this and a new one of these alive. 

So, for now, my culinary whims have shifted. Shifted from grown-up cooking to trying not to have a battle at the supper table cooking. Tilly, toothless at almost eight months, has started to revolt against spoons. So, she eats chopped up supper, or should I say smears, throws and drops chopped up supper. I notice I have a much more laissez-faire attitude to feeding this one than I did with Poppy, but I still need to prepare a couple of versions of each meal. This all means that simplicity is key right now, which can be darn delicious and makes you feel better too.

The best way to get Poppy to eat something she isn't really enjoying is to bribe her, no I am not above bribing my children - needs must and all that, with dessert. Even better, a favourite dessert. And, believe it or not, most of those come containing rhubarb.

And no, we don't have our own little microclimate here. Rhubarb is not in season, almost but not quite. I am using up all of what is left in the freezer from last year's harvest to make room for new. So, there are a few rhubarb recipes coming in the next little while to prepare you for the glut. And doesn't that feel springish?

I have never used a recipe to make fruit crisp, but this one turned out really well, and I remembered to measure and make note of the quantities, so I thought I would share. Even the not so keen on rhubarb, Caribbean cruising husband (not that I mind) liked it. Although, that could have been the lashings of vanilla whipped cream he was really enjoying.

I chop the rhubarb when it is fresh and then freeze it in a single layer on a baking tray and transfer it to a zipper bag ready to draw us out of winter depths when needed. For this recipe, I used it straight from the freezer. You could easily use fresh. I also use Lara's pure oat flour. It isn't available everywhere but you can substitute all purpose, or half AP and half whole wheat. But, if you can get your hands on the oat flour, I think it makes a great crisp top. I like to use old fashioned rolled oats when I can. Tapioca isn't something everyone has on hand but it is a great thickener for fruit based stuff like this. I used a vanilla bean because I had some but it can be skipped.

I am calling this a crisp here but we call it a crumble 'round ours in one of our mid-Atlantic verbal mishmashes.

Rhubarb Crisp 

4 cups chopped rhubarb

2 tablespoons fine tapioca

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 vanilla bean, split and seeds removed

2 cups rolled oats 

1 cup oat flour

1/2 cup butter cut into small pieces

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup whipping cream

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla.

Preheat oven to 325º.

In a mixing bowl, toss rhubarb, tapioca and granulated sugar and vanilla bean seeds together, coating the rhubarb. Transfer to oven proof dish.

Rub oats, flour, butter and sugar together until butter is distributed and the it sticks together if you squeeze some in your hand. Gently cover the rhubarb with the 'crisp.'

Bake for around an hour. You should be able to see the fruit bubbling up around the topping.

No, I didn't feed this to Tilly but I did think about it.