Rhubarb Cottage….

I ate my dinner in front of the TV, watching Hugh Impossibly-Long-Name at River Cottage. I wasn’t really concentrating until after he had baked some rhubarb, which was just about at the same time as I finished my dinner…. and I thought “Hmmmm…. dessert would be nice…. how did Hugh do that rhubarb thing?”

I have one of those fancy machines that lets you rewind live TV…. so rewind I did…. and saw him throw a whole pile of chopped rhubarb in a baking dish, drizzle it with quite a bit of honey and stick it into the oven for 20 minutes or so.

I hesitated… its dark, you see…. and I’d have to pick rhubarb by torch light. Well, the gist of it is that I did it and discovered the rhubarb had grown amazingly long stems since I last looked at it, which was very good timing. All excited, I picked way more than I meant to!

Inside, I washed and chopped it and tossed it in the baking dish….and I’d cleverly put the oven on before I went outside. I have one pot left of my favourite honey, orange blossom. It had gone a bit hard so I scooped out a big spoonful, put it into a glass jug and heated it so I could drizzle, like Hugh did. And that is all I did. Into the oven it went, for 20 minutes.

If it was ordinary, I would not be sitting here writing this! I would be watching Maeve’s French Food Safari, which my TiVo has agreed to pause for me, while I tell you that this was the best rhubarb thing I have ever eaten….and simply served piping hot, with icecream.

I ate half; more rhubarb than anyone needs to eat but….. I might just have a tiny skerrick more, with a teensy weensy little dollop of ice cream….. or maybe I will leave it for breakfast!

Don’t be shy with the honey; it can take a lot. This is not the mushy rhubarb you get when you cook it in a saucepan; this is texture and full flavour. Be careful not to overcook it or it may ruin your baking dish when the honey burns.