Kitchen Garden Guides

Friday, July 13, 2012

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.

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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.

7 comments:

DEB said...

How hot was the oven please, I have someone here who would love that.

Kate said...

Hi DEB,

I put it on 160C (fan forced) - probably no higher than that (depending on thickness of stems),

Kate

Lisa said...

Yum! I have recently rediscovered rhubarb after turning my nose up at it as a child - what a fool I was! I could have been enjoying this delicious treat for years!!

africanaussie said...

that looks like a rhubarb I could learn to love. I don't have fond memories of the mush we had as a child.

Kirsty @ Bowerbird Blue said...

yum. I would have thought that would be too dry but looks delicious

Sarah said...

Sounds delicious. BTW Hugh is known as Huge Furry-Wellies in our house.

Grumbleweed Studios said...

He does stewed rhubarb with orange juice, sugar and cinnamon I think. It was rather delicious as well. His recipes are easy to google as well. I think that was the base for rhubarb fool. My 2 year old liked the first one so thats usually good delicious indicator.