My Top 10 Rhubarb Recipes

After a very cold start to the winter, which saw everything covered in snow for the better part of December, we have been having rather warm, wet weather for most of February, and the spring plants are making up for lost time. In our front garden, the daffodils are just about ready to bloom, and in the back garden the rhubarb is growing.

Most years, although the rhubarb starts coming back up around Christmas, I figure it doesn't really get big enough to eat until around Easter. This year, Easter is late, and the rhubarb seems early - although none of the stalks that have come up are full-sized yet, if we picked the small stalks we have now it would probably be enough for a small rhubarb crumble.

The appearance of the rhubarb leads me to reflect on my favorite rhubarb recipes, so here is a list of my top 10.

1. Stewed Rhubarb and Ginger, from The English Country Cooking Diary 1988 by Maxine Clark.

2. Lamb and Rhubarb Stew, from The Legendary Cuisine of Persia by Margaret Shaida.

3. Upside-down Rhubarb and Ginger Cake - from Rachel's Favourite Food at Home by Rachel Allen. (See the recipe here on the UKTV Good Food Channel website.)


4. Rhubarb Ice Cream, from Rachel's Favourite Food for Friends by Rachel Allen.


5. Rhubarb and Strawberry Crumble, from Bake by Rachel Allen.


6. Rhubarb Sponge, from Rachel's Favourite Food for Friends by Rachel Allen.



7. Rhubarb Chutney, from The Guardian Weekend, March 2, 1996 by Rowley Leigh.

8. Rhubarb and Date Tart, from The Archers' Country Cookbook by Martha Woodford.

9. Rhubarb Crumble, from Delia Smith's Complete Cookery Course.

10. Rhubarb Fool, from The Cookery of England by Elisabeth Ayrton.

La-Lot Beef Soup

Having come across some la-lot leaves for the first time in an Oriental supermarket the other day, I got out my Oriental cookery books, and found that I only had 2 Vietnamese recipes which called for la-lot leaves after all. This seems to happen to me over and over again when I come across some new ingredient which I'm sure I've read about in some cookbook or other. When I actually buy the stuff, I can't find the recipes I was sure I had for it, lol.



I ended up using the la-lot leaves in this very tasty as well as colorful Vietnamese soup, from Simple Art of Vietnamese Cooking by Binh Duong and Marcia Kiesel, and I'm sure we'll be making it again. The la-lot leaves, piper sarmentosum, are apparently related to the vine that produces black pepper.



La-lot Beef Soup
4 cups chicken stock
1 1/2 cups steamed white rice, preferably long grain jasmine rice
2 whites of scallions (spring onions), thinly sliced
1/2 t ground black pepper
3 T Vietnamese fish sauce (nuoc mam)
8 ounces lean beef (top round), cut into very thin slices
3 T vegetable oil
1/2 t dried chili flakes
2 stalks lemon grass, flattened with the side of a knife, and cut into 2" lengths
2 medium tomatoes, cut into thin wedges
10 la-lot leaves, cut into wide strips

In a large bowl combine the scallions, black pepper, and 1 T. of the fish sauce.

Add the beef and toss to coat. Set aside to marinate for 10 min.

Put 1T of the oil in a small saucepan over high heat. When a chili flake sizzles, drop in the rest and remove from the heat. Set the chili oil aside.

Bring the stock and the lemon grass to the boil in a large saucepan, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 10 min.

Heat the remaining 2 T. oil in a wok over high heat. Whent he oil starts to smoke, add the beef and brown it on both sides, stirring once or twice. Add the tomatoes and stir fry until the beef is cooked., about 2 min. With a large spoon, add the beef and tomatoes to the soup. Bring the soup to the boil over high heat, add the remaining 2 T. of fish sauce and the reserved chili oil. Remove from the heat and stir in the la-lot leaves. To serve, spoon rice into each soup bowl and ladle the soup over it. Eat with chopsticks and soup spoons.

London on a Grand Scale

Got off the tube at Green Park this morning, a part of London I haven't seen in many years. I was immediately impressed by the tall, grand, old buildings, as I passed the Ritz Carleton Hotel, what seemed to be various other grand hotels, Patisserie Valerie, and then as I walked down St. James's past a window displaying Cuban cigars, and another window belonging to a perfumery. I was headed for King's Street, and the famous auction house Christie's. I had been told that Christie's were having an auction of impressionist paintings in the next few days, and that prior to the auction the paintings were on display and could be viewed by members of the general public, something that would never have occurred to me. I thought that with my track record as regards art galleries (I managed to live in Paris for more than a year and never set foot inside a gallery or museum, but that's another story...), I had better take the opportunity to see these works of art. The display was quite impressive, several rooms of paintings, all from private collectors, featuring painters like Picasso, Renoir, Gauguin, Pisarro, Chagall, and many others that, not being an art expert, I had never heard of before. There were also a few Rodin sculptures and a Henry Moore. My favorite painting was one of a blue vase with pink flowers on a blue background, Les Lys Magiques, by Marc Chagall. I also loved the colors of Terrasse a Vernon by Pierre Bonnard, the blues and greens, and for some reason I also decided I liked the pale mauve monochromatic Brume sur l'Oise by Gustave Loiseau.

Saint-Exupery

Have been listening to the Afternoon Play on Radio 4, an account of
Antoine de Saint-Exupery crashing his plane in Libya in the 1930's.

I remember watching the Miss Canada Pageant on TV in 1966 or 1967. Miss Montreal, the eventual winner (Marie-France Beaulieu, I believe), recited a passage from Saint-Exupery's Le Petit Prince for the talent competition. It was only a few years ago that I realised that Terre des Hommes (Man and His World in English), the theme for Expo '67 (the Montreal World's Fair) is the name of a novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Chocolate (again) and Cookbooks

Discovered that there is a Paul A. Young Chocolates shop in the Royal Exchange building near Bank when I went past it on the bus this afternoon. I will be sure to check it out at the next available opportunity.

While I was browsing in a vintage bookshop I came across copies of two vegetarian cookbooks that I think were very popular in the 1980's before I left Canada - The Vegetarian Epicure Book Two by Anna Thomas, and the New Laurel's Kitchen by Laurel Robertson. I read on the back cover of another cookbook that I was browsing through, that the author had a collection of something like 750 cookbooks! Where did she keep them all.

I also got in some browsing of more current cookbooks in Waterstones, and I came across copies of Cook in Boots by Ravinder Bhogal, and Flavour by Vicky Bhogal. Both have some good dessert recipes, including chocolate truffles, white chocolate and blueberry crumble muffins, and rhubarb and rosewater fairy cakes. I guess in this particular section the books were arranged in alphabetical order according to the author's surname, and I don't really remember which recipes are from which book. I've had a quick look on the internet though, and found that Vicky Bhogal has a website with a download of a few recipes from Flavour, which includes the Rhubarb and Rosewater Fairycakes recipe.

The link is here.

Happy Easter!

One of the Easter-time traditions in our house is that D makes hot cross buns on Good Friday. I can't remember exactly when he started it, but I think that I was living in a house without central heating at the time, and since the weather around Easter in England is often cold and wet, it would usually be mid-afternoon before the dough had risen sufficiently. After a few years of this, he realised that the dough would rise more quickly if he put it somewhere warm, so now we usually get our hot cross buns before lunch time.

The recipe is from an old Good Housekeeping cookbook that used to belong to his Mom.

The recipe calls for plain flour. I have to say that if I was making this recipe for the first time, I would be tempted to use bread flour with anything that is yeast raised, but D has always used plain flour, and it works perfectly well.

Hot Cross Buns
recipe from Good Housekeeping Easy-Stages Cook Book, Ebury Press, London, 1968.

2 t. dried yeast
5 oz. warm milk
1 t. sugar
12 oz. plain flour
1/2 t. salt
1 oz. lard (or margarine)
2 oz. caster sugar
1/2 t. mixed spice
1 oz. dried fruit (we usually use raisins or currants)
1 egg
1 oz. lard (or margarine) for the pastry crosses
2 oz. sugar and 2 T. milk for the glaze

Dissolve the 1 t. sugar in the warm milk. Sprinkle the yeast on top of the milk, stir and leave for 10 - 15 min, until frothy.

Sift the flour and salt and rub in the 1 oz. lard. Stir in the 2 oz. caster sugar, the mixed spice and the dried fruit.

Break the egg into a bowl and whisk lightly with a fork.

Make a well in the flour and pour in the milk and yeast and the egg. Using a wooden spoon, gradually work in the flour to form a soft dough. Beat well until smooth, cover with a cloth and put to rise.

Grease a baking tray.

When the dough is risen, turn it out onto a floured board and knead lightly. Divide into 9 pieces. Flour your hands and form each piece into a round shape. Flatten slightly and put on the baking tray.

Cover and leave in a warm place until doubled in size.

Rub the remaining 1 oz. fat into the 2 oz. plain flour and add a little cold water, until the mixture forms a firm dough. Knead lightly, then roll out thinly on a floured board and cut into thin strips 2 inches long.

To make the glaze, dissolve the 2 oz. sugar in the 2 T. milk and boil until syrupy.

When the buns have proved, moisten the strips of pastry with a little water or milk, and lay 2 on each bun to form a cross.

Bake at the top of a hot oven (425 degrees F, Gas Mark 7) for 15 - 20 min, until golden-brown and firm to the touch. Brush at once with glaze and allow to cool.

Makes 9 buns.

If time is short, omit the pastry crosses and mark a cross on each bun by making 2 deep cuts.

Happy Easter!

February

February. The first daffodils, Valentine's Day, usually Shrove Tuesday aka Pancake Day over here, and this year Chinese New Year - the year of the Tiger - as well.

Well, we actually saw the first daffodils on the 30th of January when we were out for a walk, but they don't really count because they were in containers. The daffodils in the ground are way behind this year compared to recent years, and they aren't anywhere near flowering yet.

Valentine's Day is usually associated with flowers and chocolate, so today I am giving you a link to a recipe for a very yummy but easy to make rich chocolate desert, called Truffle Torte.

The recipe is here, at Delia Online. The recipe is also in two of Delia's books - Delia Smith's Christmas and The Delia Collection, Chocolate.

I made this for Valentine's Day last year, using a 200g block of Valrhona's Manjari couverture chocolate that I had bought in John Lewis, so I scaled the quantities of the other ingredients accordingly.

As the recipe says, the torte was well behaved and remained in one piece when I turned it out of the tin onto a plate. I dusted the surface of the torte with Green and Black's cocoa powder.

We served the torte as suggested, with some single cream poured over it, but we didn't add any flavoring or liqueur to the single cream.

I apologise for the photos - the torte does look rather just like a chocolate blob, and when we poured the cream over the slices of torte, the cream and cocoa powder didn't mix, so the cream just sort of slid off the top of the slice and formed a pool around it. But the taste didn't disappoint, and there is a much nicer picture of the torte in Delia Smith's Christmas.