Rhubarb

I really like rhubarb, and am constantly looking for new things to do with it. This year I've been experimenting with two recipes:

Rabarbarasulta is Icelandic Caramalized Rhubarb Jam. This recipe is from Island-Kochbuch by Maike Hanneck http://www.librarything.com/work/2614413/book/32732501

1 kg Rhubarb
600 g Sugar

Clean and cut up your rhubarb. Mix it in a pot with the sugar and leave for several hours, or overnight. This starts getting the juice out of the rhubarb. Now bring it to a boil. Reduce the flame and keep boiling, stirring occaisionally until it gets brown and thick. Towards the end it will need fairly constant stirring. Jar as for other jams.

I'm going to try letting it get even browner next time I try it. It has a very peculiar consistency due to the fact that it is thickened with caramel and rhubarb fibers instead of pectin, but it is delicious. I promise - this recipe really works, and it's a lot faster than it sounds. The cookbook says it can take up to two hours. I didn't need that long. It is a lot easier than making fruit butters. Faster and less apt to scorch.

In Iceland they use it on pancakes with 'skyr'. Since as far as I know, skyr is only available in Iceland try it with other dairy products.

Rhubarb-ginger bars

This has changed a good deal from the first version.

Preheat oven to 375.

3 cups Rhubarb
1 cup (whole wheat) flour
2 tsp Baking powder
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup chopped nuts
1 Tbsp finely chopped fresh ginger
2 tsp vanilla (sugar)
2 eggs

Butter a rectangular pan. Mine is about 9 1/2 x 13 1/2 in.

Chop the rhubarb and mix it with the flour, baking powder and sugar. Add the nuts, ginger and vanilla. Lightly beat the two eggs and stir them in.

At this point you will be sure that I left some liquid out. Just keep stirring a little longer. The flour will eventually all be moistened. Scrape it into the pan and even it out. Bake for 25 minutes.

This amount of ginger is for people who really like fresh ginger. You can reduce it, use other forms of ginger (if you use ground ginger try about 1/2 - 1 tsp, I would think), leave it out altogether if you prefer.

If you like your desserts really sweet, use more sugar. This level suits my taste, which is to have the acidity of the rhubarb still quite noticable. I think next time I may use half brown and half white sugar. My son really likes brown sugar, but I think it overwhelms the rhubarb a bit.

I use whole wheat flour for everything, and vanilla sugar rather than vanilla extract. That doesn't mean you have to.

Those look lovely.

#1: Oh, skyr! Lovely! Almost worth going to Iceland for. For those who don't have a clue what it is, I think really good thick Greek yoghurt or full-fat quark is the best approximation. And I suppose crème fraiche would not be that far off, except it's a bit too much fat. Skyr is very creamy, very thick, but not fat at all.

'Almost worth going to Iceland for.'?? Not almost.

There are lots of very good reasons to go to Iceland, and Skyr is up near the top. Unfortunately it seemed less easy to get last year than it had on our earlier trips. It was fun watching our youngest son get stuck on it. It's not as sour as yoghurt. It's creamier than Topfen (I live in Austria, what the Germans call Quark, we call Topfen.)

Another reason to go to Iceland is the wonderful sulfurous hot water that comes out of the taps in Rekjavik. (No worries, the cold water is fine to drink.) It feels so good on your skin, and does wonders for both skin and hair.

Then there is the wool, bring an extra suitcase so you can load up on yarn.

And since you can't live just off of pancakes with skyr and rabarbasulta, there is wonderful fish, (try the dried fish eaten with butter as if it was a sort of cracker) and wonderful lamb. I wasn't quite as keen on the wild bird egg I had. It was very pretty, but had a rather fishy flavour.

And in between shopping and eating, you will find marvellous scenery, friendly people, fascinating birds, (love the puffins!) all the geysers, great museums... (The textile museum near Akureri is really good if you are into that sort of thing.)

Best of all, right now it should even be affordable!

And don't forget the Blue Lagoon, and all the other wonderful swimming pools. And that cute Icelandic accent...

No, I don't forget the Blue Lagoon. That is something I won't do again. We did that just before flying out, and I wasn't warned that that stuff is hard to get out of hair. A quick shampoo is not enough. My hair was stuck together as if with glue all the way home. Yuck! And that after the wonderful way it had felt the whole two weeks in Rekjavik. A real shame.

Lovely rhubarb ideas. I make something called Rhubarb Betty, not quite as healthy as your bars sound. In a deep dish, you layer bread buttered on both sides, diced rhubarb and sugar. Build at least three layers adding sugar to your taste, but you need more than you might think unless you like tart. End with a layer of buttered bread, bake in oven at 350° for about 30-40 minutes, or until bread is toasty on top and rhubarb layers are soft when poked with a fork. You may need to cover it at the end if the bread browns too early.

I can recomend people to visit Iceland, very nice place.

I got a recipe for a rhubarb cake (desert) from my sons mother in law. I'll try to translate it.

BERIT's MERINGUE RHUBARB PIE

RHUBARB
1/2 kg rhubarb, cleaned and cut up
2 dl sugar, over the rhubarb
Pour into a large bakingtin (24 cm) and cook for 30 minutes with 150 celcius.

As a variation you can spice with cinnamon.

MERINGUE
3 eggwhites, beaten stiff
240 gram sugar, add one spoon at a time and beat to all the sugar is used.
1 teaspoon apple-vinegar, or whitevine-vinegar shall be added finally.

Put the mass into a well-greased (baking) pai-tin (24 cm). Make the edges higher, to make room for the filling.
Cook in the oven at 150 degree celcius for 35 minutes. The last 10 minutes are critical. Be wary not to let it be burned.
Use the bottom slots in the oven.

CREAM
Whip 2,5 dl cream with very little sugar

ASSEMBLE THE CAKE
Assemble the cake just before serving;
Put the cream into the depression. Put the well
strained rhubarb on top of the cream

(If you want the juice from the rhubarb can be served in a mug.)

Lovely dessert or cake.

That sounds good. I usually find merangues too sweet for my taste, but the rhubarb might just cut that.

For American readers: 200 g of sugar is about 3/4 cup. 240 g sugar would be about a cup. 2.5 dl cream is also about a cup. 150 celsius is about 300 Fahrenheit. Yes, you want the oven that low for a merangue.

And yes, I know I can't spell merange.

Thank you for the american measurement.
I do not love those too sweet merangues either, but the acidity in the rhubarb balance this nicely.
Just for the special occation, too much sugar are not very healthy.

There's a very useful, albeit slightly eccentric recipe (in its presentation, rather than its radical ways with rhubarb) here - http://ignoblestrife.blogspot.com/

And Nigella Lawson's website offers a range of intriguing options - http://www.nigella.com/recipe/recipe_result.aspx?keywords=rhubarb

Why, oh why, do people insist on adding water to rhubarb? Add the sugar and let it sit around for a bit, and you have lots of good rhubarb juice, and the result isn't watery rhubarb. If I were making the crumble, I would let the rhubarb sit around in the oven while it was preheating, as I like my rhubarb well cooked, and not crunchy.

RE Nigella. I have one of her cookbooks - bought because of the rhubarb recipe in it. Now I must try the cordial and the chessecake.

With reference to your anti-water-with-rhubarb explosion... I'm not sure that you can have a hard and fast rule for such things. If, for example, you were to make a crumble in a deep dish then, the chances are, any additional water would be superfluous. On the other hand, if you were to use the same volume of ingredients in a shallow dish, there would necessarily be far more evaporation due to increased surface area, hence need for small amount of water, especially if you're not packing down your topping to act like the lid of a pie.

Dear rhubarb lovers - I have just bought a copy of Rhubarbaria, truly a must-purchase for anyone with a taste for this most delicious of stalks. Very well written and researched, it's a compelling read and a very practical recipe book (though I'll probably be giving the recipe for roast puffin with rhubarb jam a miss...)

I would too. It's so hard to get a decent puffin around these parts.

#15 - Visit the Green Dragon pub, they hang out there a lot and really mess up the roombas. ;)

Thanks MrsLee. Welcome back.

Nigella is a big fan of rhubarb and generally has at least one, if not several, recipes, in each book. Our favorite is her Rhubarb Cornmeal Cake from How to be a Domestic Goddess especially loved by my 16-year old son, who has it for his birthday cake every year (and I had to make it for him this week as congrats for passing his driving test). The muscat-mascarpone cream she suggests as an accompaniment is essential in my view (I'd happily eat it on its own).

I just made this recipe after a glorious week of living on fish, good bread, skyr and caramelised rhubarb in Iceland. Brilliant recipe, it tastes just like it did in Iceland! I maybe cooked it a bit too long as the consistency is rather thicker, but the flavour is spot on!

>19 Sarah-in-Gib: You are new, so I'm pleased to welcome another Rhubarb and skyr fan to LibraryThing.

In LT all replys land at the bottom of the topic, so to make it clear which post you are refering to, it's a good idea to start with > and the number of that post (no space in between). The link and the member name appear magically!

>14 winterreise: I just got around to buying and reading Rhubarbaria. It's going to be a long wait to try these recipes out. What a lovely collection of recipes, though. Thank you.

Hopefully my rhubarb will be coming up soon.
I am in Minnesota.
Leona

Made rhubarb scones at the weekend, worked very well. Essentially just swap out the dried fruit for rhubarb, but watch the liquid levels a bit as Rhubarb is a lot wetter than currents. The hard bit was finding clotted cream!

>23 reading_fox: Ooooo, I may have to try that! I know I won't find clotted cream, but will make do. :)

My sister is coming today and bringing me some fresh rhubarb. I plan to make jam out of some of it, because I have a recipe for an oatmeal cookie bar type of thing which calls for cranberry jelly. I love it, and I think it would be equally fine with rhubarb jam/compote.

>24 MrsLee: there was a discussion about clotted cream on FB, I think Amazon can supply it in (at least some of) the US. I can't easily check from here. (or you can be very adventurous and make your own).

>25 reading_fox: I have made my own before, and yes, it is delicious. We have a company called Two English Ladies about 40 miles from my town who make clotted cream and a few other delicious spreads and jar them to sell at Farmer's Markets. The sad thing is, I rarely make/eat the things the cream goes on anymore!

Just started this year's rhubarb season. I see that the two plants I set in the fall have survived the winter. Not ready to harvest yet, but the supermarket had some.

I was baking bread today so I set aside a bit of the dough to enrich (butter, egg, brown sugar, ground hazelnuts) as a base for the rhubarb pieces. A bit of that dough was loosened with another egg, the liquid the rhubarb gave off after being mixed with sugar for a while, and a bit of goat's whey to be poured over the top. It worked well. Next time I might follow a recipe.

My rhubarb plant just sprung up. We divided it into three plants because the stalks were getting thinner last year. We gave away two plants and replanted the third. I probably should not harvest any of the stalks this year, but I might do so anyway.

I look forward to see what others Will be doing with their rhubarb this year.

I still have some snow on my plants.

Going through old messages, I saw this message. This past year I had a horrible rhubarb crop and I understand I was not alone. I only got one bunch this whole year.

This past year we dug up our rhubarb plant to sub-divide it. We gave away 2/3 of it. We replanted what was left. I knew I wasn’t supposed to pull any stalks this past year, but I cheated a little. I still hope for a good, strong plant this coming spring. :)

I made rhubarb ketchup last year. I don't eat tomatoes, and this made an excellent substitute. It leans a bit toward bbq sauce, but works fine. I didn't set out to make ketchup. I was going to make a rhubarb chutney, but I added balsamic vinegar (trying to use up a not-very-good-quality one in the pantry), which turned it a deep, dark brown color. Not very appetizing as a chutney or compote. So I whirled it in my Vitamix and tasted it. WOW! So good.