rhubarb

Rhubarb berry trifle

maki — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 18:20:52 +0200

On rhubarb, stewed fruit and England

I first saw this curious plant called rhubarb during the time we lived for 5 years in Berkshire, England. I was 5 when we moved there. The rhubarb grew like a small jungle in a corner of the vegetable patch of the house we were renting, alongside some equally puzzling gooseberry bushes. Neither existed at all in Japan at the time, and my mother was at a loss as to what to do with them, until our next door neighbor lady told her how to stew them. The neighbor lady believed in stewing most fruit - she told my mother to stew or jam all of the raspberries too, since eating them raw may lead to upset small tummies. Thankfully my mother didn’t take her advice for all of the raspberries, and I still have memories of stickily enjoying bowls and bowls of red, ripe raspberries with clouds of whipped cream. One of the first things I did when I got my own garden was to plant several raspberry canes.

Stewed and cooked fruit figures quite prominently in my memories of English food at the time. This was in the ’70s. Whenever I was invited to tea at a friend’s house, there was usually always some sort of cooked fruit dish, be it a compote of peaches in the summer or apple and blackberry pie later on in the year. I think we only ate fresh, raw fruit at home, except for bananas and strawberries. I didn’t even know that gooseberries could be anything other than sour, green and only edible stewed with sugar, until I came to Switzerland and saw them left to ripen on a bush, turning a bright reddish-purple.

That penchant for cooking fruit does mean that there are many terrific fruity desserts (aka puddings) in British cookbooks. One of them is trifle. I’m in the midst of my annual rhubarb orgy period, and it’s one ‘fruit’ (though it’s botanically a vegetable) that needs to be cooked. Hence, the rhubarb trifle.

The slightly modernized trifle

A trifle is small pieces of sponge cake soaked in a sweet, fruity liquid, and topped with custard or cream. Some versions of trifle are quite alcoholic, but this one has no alcohol in it since I imagine my 8 year old self tucking into it. The components are simple: the fruit-liquidy mix, the cake, and the creamy topping. The key part that makes this trifle different is the rhubarb soaking liquid part, which is quite sour and not too sweet. I’ve added a few frozen berries (raspberries from last summer’s crop in fact) to make the red color more intense - if you have fresh strawberries by all means use those instead.

Trifle is traditionally topped with custard, cream or both. Here I have combined the two so to speak and topped it with vanilla ice cream instead - this is the slightly modernized part. It’s homemade but you can use a good store bought ice cream if you don’t want to bother, or don’t have an ice cream maker.

I think that the key to a good trifle is to not overload it with sponge cake, which makes it go rather stodgy. Add just a few pieces for the interesting texture. Note that I’ve used pieces of store bought roll cake here (called Swiss roll in England, but not really Swiss as far as I know) which adds some extra flavor. You can assemble it all in a big bowl, or in individual glasses as I’ve done here.

This is my pre-planned entry for Sam’s Fish and Quips event celebrating British food. See also my other two British-theme posts this week, Tasting Guinness Marmite and The Edwardians and their food.

Rhubarb berry trifle with vanilla ice cream

To keep the color as clean and red as possible, use only the red parts of rhubarb stalks. This may mean buying more rhubarb than you need. Use the green parts for another dish.

I’ve used cup measurements here throughout since it’s easier for this particular recipe, and everything is proportional. Note 1 cup = 250ml.

The ice cream part:

This makes more ice cream than you’ll probably need but…anything wrong with that? I don’t think so. You can skip this step and get some good quality store bought.

Vanilla Ice Cream

2 cups whole milk
1 vanilla pod or 1 tsp. real vanilla extract
4 egg yolks from pasteurized eggs or eggs from very happy organic hens
7/8th cups (a bit less than 1 cup) sugar
1 cup heavy cream

If using a vanilla pod, cut it open and scrape out the beans put the pod and the beans into the milk. Let the milk simmer for about 10-15 minutes on very low heat.

In a bowl, beat together the yolks and the sugar. Slowly add the heated milk (fish out the pod), beating vigorously. Add the vanilla extract if you are using that. Add the cream and whisk together. Let cool until ice cold. Put into an ice cream maker and churn following the manufacturer’s instructions. This, incidentally, is my standard vanilla ice cream recipe.

The rhubarb-berry part:

8 cups of cut up red rhubarb
1 cup fresh or frozen red berries (raspberries or strawberries or even red currants)
1 1/4 cups sugar
Juice of 1 lemon

Mix everything together in a non-reactive pan (stainless steel, enamel or non-stick. Not aluminum or iron in other words). Heat over medium-low heat - after a while it will become quite liquid. Simmer for about 20 minutes until the rhubarb pieces are soft.

Let cool to room temperature, and taste - if it seems too sour to you (remembering that you’ll be adding sweet cake pieces to it) add a little sugar and mix well to melt.

The cake part:

A store bought (Swiss) roll cake with a jam and cream filling

To assemble it all:

For every cup of the rhubarb mixture, add about 1/3 cup’s worth of cut up cake. Don’t overload the liquid with the cake, and reserve some for decoration. Allow the combined mixture to mellow and cool in the fridge for several hours.

To serve, scoop the mixture into individual parfait glasses or into one big glass bowl, a trifle bowl if you have one. The mixture should come up to about 2/3rds of the height of the glass. Top with scoops of softened vanilla ice cream, and decorate with slices of the roll cake.

Rhubarb, ginger and berry smoothie to chase away a cold

maki — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:45:07 +0200

I have a raging cold at the moment. Stuffed head, fever, ringing ears, streaming eyes, the lot. What makes it worse is that the weather is glorious outside, and here I am stuck inside, groaning a lot and feeling sorry for myself.

In times like this the only things I can even think about eating and drinking are fruity yogurt, juices, and tea. This smoothie, which is an adaptation from a recipe in the adorable Innocent Smoothie Recipe Book, combines two of those elements and is tart yet spicy in a nice chest-clearing sort of way. It also tastes wonderful. Although, I’m pretty sure it would taste even better if my mouth didn’t feel like cotton wool.

It’s a good thing I took this picture against the clear blue spring skies before the cold took over at full steam.

The glass in the photo is a vintage ’60s frosted-glass one I got at a flea market in New York. I have a set of 6. I love them and would kill anyone who broke them.

Rhubarb, berry and ginger smoothie

For the stewed rhubarb in apple juice:

1 carton of apple juice (1 litre or 1 quart) - organic, blabla preferred, or juice your own apples
4-5 stalks rhubarb, cut up

Stew the rhubarb in the apple juice until soft, about 10-15 minutes. This can be stored in the fridge for making the smoothies later.

For the smoothie:

1 cup stewed rhubarb and juice
1 cup fresh or frozen red berries - strawberries or raspberries or a mix
8 Tbs. plain yogurt
1 Tbs. ginger syrup (if you don’t have ginger syrup, use honey)
1 tsp. ginger juice (grate some fresh ginger and squeeze out the juice)

Combine all in a blender. Serve in tall cool glasses.

Makes 2 servings (which you may consume by yourself if needed as medication)

Notes

It’s also great without the ginger element. (The original recipe doesn’t have ginger.)

The Innocent Drinks Company is a U.K. maker of smoothies and other ‘healthy’ type drinks, with very hip and cute marketing. (They’ve recently branched out to Germany too.) In a way the book is another marketing ploy. It has cute bite-sized bits about saving the environment and so on, alongside the nice and sometimes quite imaginative smoothie ideas.

I do try to not over-indulge in smoothies since one glass of a smoothie can be like 3-400 calories, but nothing much else goes down as, eh, smoothly, when your tonsils are swollen.

Masterchef challenge day 24: Pork chops in Cider, Prune and Apple Sauce With Red Cabbage; Rhubarb with Two Creamy Cheeses

maki — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 17:34:53 +0100

It's the final day of the Masterchef ingredient test challenge that I set out to do some weeks ago. My thoughts on the whole experience will follow, but here is the last ingredients list:

Red cabbage
Apples
Swede
Cream cheese
Cider
Prunes
Pork chops

I can't say that this last list was overly inspiring to me, but I made a dish that while not particularly photogenic, did taste pretty good. The key here is the absolutely yummy sauce, made from cider, apple cider vinegar, chopped up apple and prunes, chopped leek, light cream and the pan juices from the pork chops. I cooked the red cabbage in cider also, and they came out crispy yet tender. Accompanying this was some good old mashed potatoes.

A key ingredient is the cider. Cider in this case means a sort of apple wine, that is fermented with about 7 to 8% alcohol. It's not the kind of fresh apple cider you see in the U.S. It's sort of similar to hard cider, and you can certainly use that. In my case I used something called Apfelwein trüb, which is an unfiltered, lightly alchoholic (4.4%) unsweetened apple beverage with about 10% pear juice.

For my second dish, I cheated just a bit by using rhubarb again, with a big spoonful of a mix of equal parts cream cheese and quark with a bit of sugar. But I think one of the basic ideas pushed by the Masterchef series is that how important it is to cook with seasonal ingredients, and that's what I'm doing here. If I were doing this at the time when the show was filmed, then I would have done some sort of baked apple thing.

Quark is a type of fresh cheese that is sold in Germanic areas; it's rather similar to French fromage blanc. Fromage blanc is sold in "gourmet" stores in the U.S. (I've seen it at Whole Foods and Fairway in New York.) You can substitute plain yogurt, which would be a bit more loose and acidic, so you may want to add a bit more sugar. In the U.K. you should use Greek yoghurt. Please follow the very easy recipe for baked rhubarb in my recent entry.

To finish this meal within the alloted 50 minutes, start preparing the rhubarb and putting it in the oven. Then peel the potatoes and get them boiling. Shred the cabbage and start cooking them, sear the pork chops, make the sauce, and finish off the pork chops. If you have more time though, I would recommend slowly simmering the pork chops in the sauce for at least 40 minutes or more longer. Meat is a funny thing: first you have tender, rare-to-medium stage, then you get rapidly get to tough as leather stage. After that though if you cook it long enough it will soften and relax. So remember: for tender pork chops, cook then briefly or very long.

Unused ingredient: swede. A swede is the British name for those big, purple-necked turnips. There are very few vegetables I dislike, and swedes are one of them. I love the tender little white Japanese turnips but these big, flavorless, often woody swedes are not worth coming near a plate, in my opinion.

The following amounts serves 4 people.

Red Cabbage In Cider

1 small head of red cabbage, core removed and finely julienned
1 large onion, sliced thin
Buter or oil for cooking
2 cups cider
1/2 cup sugar
Salt and pepper

Heat butter or oil or a mixture of both in a large heavy pan. Add the onions, sauté a little then add the cabbage. Add the cider and sugar. Let it cme to a boil then lower the heat the cook, stirring frequently, over a medium-low heat for about 20 minutes or until the cabbage is crisp-tender. Season with the salt and pepper.

Pork Chops in Cider Apple Prune Cream Sauce

4 medium pork chops
1 cup chopped white part of leek
1 small apple, peeled, cored and chopped up
about 10 pitted pruned, roughly chopped
1 cup cider
2 Tbs cider vinegar
1 cup light cream (US: half and half)
Butter
Salt and pepper

Lightly season the pork chops with salt and pepper. Heat up a large nonstick frying pan. When the pan is hot, add a little bit of oil, and put in the pork chops. Brown the pork chops on each side, then take out of the pan and set aside.

Add about 1 Tbs. of butter to the pan, and sauté the leek until limp. Add the cider and vinegar, and add the apple and prunes. Stir around to loosen any bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. If you see any juice coming out of the pork chops, add that to the pan too. Let cook for a couple of minutes, then add the cream. Lower the heat and simmer for about 5 10 minutes over medium-low heat. Season with salt and pepper.

Add the pork chops to the sauce. At this point either simmer for a couple of minutes then take off the heat, or (better) simmer for 40 + minutes longer.

Serve the pork chops with the red cabbage and mashed potatoes, spooning plenty of sauce on top.

Two Creamy Cheeses

This is barely a recipe at all.

4 Tbs. cream cheese
4 Tbs. quark, fromage blanc, or plain yogurt
2 Tbs. sugar
a few drops of vanilla extract

Blend all together until the sugar melts.

Serve on top of cooked fruit, such as Baked Rhubarb.

Technorati Tags: cider, masterchef, prunes, rhubarb

Baked Early Rhubarb

maki — Tue, 07 Mar 2006 15:56:55 +0100

Here in the central part of Europe we have had a ton of snow over the past few days. In our corner of Switzerland we had about half a meter (about 19 inches) of the fluffy white stuff descend on us over the weekend.

In spite of that, there is a definite sign that spring is almost here: rhubarb is back in the stores!

I adore rhubarb, and have written about it here frequently. I love its sour taste that is so lovely when tempered by sweetness. I love the color. And I really love the fact that it's one of the very few truly seasonal produce items around. Rhubarb in October has not yet, thank goodness, been engineered.

Early rhubarb is a gorgeous magenta-pink in color, with pure white interiors. The flavor doesn't differ much from later, greener rhubarb, but it sure looks more beautiful.

I've already posted a few of my favorite rhubarb recipes in the past, but this time I would like to introduce you to the easiest ever way to cook this fruit (or..is it a vegetable?): baked rhubarb. It be eaten in any number of ways: with a dollop of whipped cream or creme fraiche or quark or yogurt; with vanilla ice cream; or just on its own, straight out of the fridge, from the bowl.

Past rhubarb recipes on Just Hungry:

Rhubarb (with optional strawberry) crumble pie - one of the all time favorite recipes on Just Hungry. They even 'borrowed' the picture to illustrate a Backpack project.
Rhubarb compote with marscapone-custard cream - you can use baked rhubarb instead of the stewed one for this!
Rhubarb ginger muffins - gorgeous, dense little gems.

Technorati Tags: rhubarb

Baked rhubarb

This is so easy it's barely a recipe. My favorite kind of cooking - prepare everything, dump it into the oven, set the timer, and come back when it beeps. Cooking things in packages is always fun too. Opening the packet almost feels like unwrapping a present.

6-8 cups of cut-up rhubarb (5-6 stalks). Be sure to cut off any leaf parts.
1 1/2 - 2 cups sugar
1 vanilla pod (optional)

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 400°F.

Toss together the sugar and rhubarb. Put a double layer of aluminum foil on a baking dish, and put the rhubarb in a pile in the middle. If you're using a vanilla pod, place it in the middle of the rhubarb. Seal up the foil securely so you have a pouch. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes, until the rhubarb is tender. Chill before serving (though frankly it's good at any temperature).

If you want the rhubarb to disintegrate even more, bake for about 10 minutes longer.

If you want it to be more acidic, omit the vanilla and add the juice of half a lemon.

Rhubarb ginger muffins

maki — Wed, 11 May 2005 18:36:50 +0200

As if last month's IMBB muffin (and cupcake) orgy weren't enough, here is another muffin that has definitely entered my must-make list. It's yet another way to enjoy the tanginess of rhubarb, with the added twist of preserved or crystallized ginger. (I used my precious homemade crystallized ginger, but you can use the store-bought kind with no problems.)

I almost hesitate to call it a muffin, because it's rather dense and moist. I don't really want this sort of denseness early in the morning. It's very well suited for a mid-morning snack, or for afternoon tea. It tastes better the day after it's been baked, and subsequently seems to improve in flavor. The little cakes or muffins turn out with a very appealing pinky hue, which I've enhanced here by using pink paper cups.

Rhubarb-ginger muffins

Makes about 24 medium sized muffins.

1 large egg
3/4 cup non-runny (if you can get a hold of it) honey
1/2 cup melted butter
3/4 cup orange juice, fresh squeezed if you can manage
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 cups of chopped up rhubarb (about .5cm / 1/4 inch pieces, cut by hand)
1/2 cup finely chopped hazelnuts
1 Tbs. finely chopped preserved or crystallized ginger
2 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt

Ingredient notes: by non-runny honey I mean the kind that is sort of solid (or butter-texture) in the jar. If you can't get a hold of this kind, regular clear honey will do. The hazelnuts can be substituted with walnuts.

Preheat the oven to 150° C / 300° F. Make ready your paper cupcake cups - by doubling them, you can usually avoid having to stand them up in muffin tins.

Mix the honey with the butter over a very low heat until blended. Take off the heat, and add the juices and the beaten egg.

Add the chopped up rhubarb, nuts, and ginger to the wet mixture.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Fold this into the wet mixture, Don't overmix - as long as it's incorporated it's fine. Pour equally into the cupcake cups.

Bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of one comes out more or less clean. Let cool, and ideally let rest for at least a day before eating.

This recipe is considerably adapted from the one for Rhubarb Bread, aka Pain au Rhubarbe in one of my favorite baking books, Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads. I think the richness of this works far better as little muffin-cakes than as a dense loaf. (Incidentally I have never encountered rhubarb in France, baked in a bread or any other way... but maybe I've just missed it somehow.)

Rhubarb compote with mascarpone-custard cream

maki — Sat, 07 May 2005 17:14:24 +0200

I am shaking my head here as I realize that it's been more than a month since my last update. Time flies so fast when stuff is going on elsewhere. This means that the rhubarb season is flying past us too. Since this really is a seasonal item (vegetable? fruit?) it needs to be enjoyed as much as possible right now, before it gets too warm. My favorite rhubarb dish (because it's so easy) is still rhubarb crumble pie, but this one is a very close second, with or without the cream on top.

Already it's getting rather difficult to find the beautiful pinky rhubarb stalks that are usually forced rather than allowed to grow freely, but in case you can still get some mostly-pink stalks, this is a beautiful dessert that is worthy of the most dainty of occasions. It still tastes great even if made with the greenish stalks, though it will not look as pretty.

The compote itself should be pureed very finely, but not strained. Straining taked out all of the fibrous stuff, which adds body to the compote, and inadequate pureeing leads to some sort of long, viscosy strands hanging from your spoon, which are not too attractive. A food processor or good hand-mixer therefore is a must.

If you want to make the pink even pinker, add a ripe strawberry or two to the puree.

The cream on top is a rather complicated, utterly unctuous mixture that fits the tartness of the compote perfectly. If you find it too much of a bother to make the custard, you can also use any of the following as a topping: whipped or unwhipped cream, crème fraîche, yoghurt, fromage frais or quark. You may want to sweeten these with some vanilla sugar, or add some vanilla essence and plain icing sugar.

Rhubarb compote with marscapone-custard cream

Makes 8-12 servings, enough for a party

For the compote:

About 1 kg / 2 lb pink rhubarb cut into 2cm / 1 inch or so pieces
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup water

Mix together all the ingredients. Cook on a medium-low heat for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is totally soft. Process thoroughly in a food processor or with a handmixer. Let cool. Pour into largish wine glasses or (if you are lucky enough to have such) individual trifle bowls, about 2/3rd full. Chill in the refrigerator.

For the marscapone-custard cream:

6 egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
a pinch of salt
1 cup marscapone
2 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup crème fraîche
1 vanilla pod

Combine the milk and cream. Cut the vanilla pod in half, and scrape out the seeds inside. Dump everything incoluding the cut pods into the milk and cream mixture. Heat the milk and heavy cream in a pan over very low heat (to allow the vanilla to infuse) until hot. Combine the egg yolks, salt sugar in a bowl over another pan of hot water (or in the top of a double boiler, if you have one).

Fish out the vanilla pod. Add the milk-cream mixture slowly, stirring all the time, to the egg mixture. Heat while stirring, until the mixture coats the back of a wooden spoon (if you draw your finger through it and the mixture 'holds' before filling in the gap for a bit, then it's done.) Take off the heat and stir in the mascarpone. Cool, then pour very gently over the compote in the glasses. Chill the glasses until ready to serve. Garnish each glass with a sprig of mint.

This makes rather a lot of cream, so you may either halve the ingredients, or use the leftover to make ice cream. Either use an ice cream maker, or simply freeze in a plastic container, stirring the thing up with a spoon every couple of hours.

Rhubarb crumble pie

maki — Fri, 14 May 2004 09:49:00 +0200

Rhubarb remains one of the truly seasonal produce items, only available in the spring. We're now at the tail end of the rhubarb season, so I'm trying to enjoy it as much as possible. Rhubarb has a distinctive tart flavor that is really wonderful, and quite different from any "fruit". (Of course, the edible part of the rhubarb is technically not a fruit, since it's the stalk, but it's treated as a fruit in culinaric terms.)

There are two ways that I cook rhubarb, but this is my favorite. It is so easy to make, and makes a wonderful crisp or crumble pie, with a crunchy topping and a just-sweet-enough, syrupy rhubarb compote-like mixture underneath it. If you choose stalks that are pinkish, it will look quite pretty too, as the one in the picture turned out to be.

You can serve this on its own, or with vanilla ice cream. It 's a wonderful springtime dessert that even people lacking a sweet tooth love.

Rhubarb Crumble Pie

About 1kg /2 lb of rhubarb stalks, enough to make about 4-5 cups of cut up rhubarb
1 cup of white sugar
1/2 cup of raw or light brown sugar
125g / 4 oz. butter
3/4 cup of white flour

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 400°F.

Wash and cut up the rhubarb stalks into approximately 2cm / 1 inch pieces. Be careful to cut off any leaf parts - they are poisonous.

Melt the butter, and add the flour and sugar. Mix to make a rather crumbly mixture.

Put the rhubarb in a pie dish. Cover with the crumble mixture. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until the crumble is browned and crispy.

This is best at room temperature, or chilled a bit.