Rhubarb, Maple Syrup, Eggs: Spring At Last

 

 

No one who lives in Rhode Island needs to be told that winter, and early spring, was record-breaking cruel and unusual this year. And while it’s not exactly summer yet, there’s reason to hope that, with May around the corner, there really cannot be another devastating storm—at least not until hurricane season. Four whole months away! Let’s eat!

The edible signs of spring are late, but they are there. The maple syrup is in, there is nice rhubarb at the market, and the hens are laying eggs. Either one alone is cause for celebration. Rhubarb has become one of my late-in-life pleasures; pretty as it is (and I am a sucker for eye-appeal), I would not touch it despite being surrounded by rhubarb fanciers in my youth. I love it, as did my grandmother, stewed with sugar and eaten plain from a bowl, or stirred into yogurt. Maple syrup, in contrast, is a life-long friend; in the “don’t leave home without it” view of an essential item, I have small bottles of it in my glove compartment, my purse….have syrup, will travel. In Rhode Island it goes over countless johnnycakes, naturally, but also into countless sweet and savory dishes and my maple syrup whiskey sours. And eggs, a perfect food in its own right, are a sign of resurrection from the dead of winter like no other.

Choosing one over the other is too hard, and I’m one of those people who believe that playing favorites is unjust, so: equal time for all. Fairness is very satisfying, as this little tart attests. Of course, fair does not necessarily mean low-cal, low-fat, or low-carb, or low anything. In other words, fairness in baking is a universal good: it’s a delicious treat, one you deserve after the most brutal winter and early spring in 200 years. Restitution on a fork.

Rhode Island Maple-Rhubarb Tart

You can make this over a few days if you wish, making the dough and/or the purée the day before. The tart shell must be pre-baked blind. Makes one 9” tart; serves 6-8.

Rhubarb Purée

3 generous cups fresh rhubarb (about 1 lb of medium-size stalks, washed and trimmed)
¼ cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice
¾ cup sugar
¼ tea cardamom
1/3 cup Grade B maple syrup

Cook the first 4 ingredients for 5 minutes; add the maple syrup and cook about 5 minutes more, taking care not to scorch, until thick and coherent. Put it through a strainer. You will have a scant cup of purée. You can refrigerate it for making the curd later, or proceed.

Rhubarb Curd

1 cup rhubarb purée
Zest of 1 lemon
3 large egg yolks (reserve whites)
1 large whole egg
1 T maple syrup
2 drops red food coloring (optional)
12 T unsalted butter
2 T heavy cream

In a chef’s or other heavy pan with sloping sides, stir together the purée, lemon zest, egg and egg yolks, and maple syrup; I like to use a wooden spoon but you may prefer a whisk. Over low heat, stir/whisk the mixture continuously until thick and it just begins to bubble. Be careful not to curdle it; you may wish to do this over simmering water in a double-boiler. Check the color; if you don’t like it, you can add a drop or two of red food coloring; stir completely to incorporate.

Remove from the heat and beat the butter in, tablespoon by tablespoon, stirring until it disappears; put it back over low heat from time to time if needed. Stir in the heavy cream.

Pâte Sucrée

4 oz (1/4 lb, or 1 stick) unsalted butter, partially softened
¼ cup sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 ½ cups a-p flour
¼ tea salt
1 T heavy cream

Place the softish but still cool butter in a standing mixer and beat a minute or two till soft; scrape down the bowl and add the sugar, beat a minute, and then add the yolk and beat until incorporated. Add the flour and salt, beat until it comes together (it will still be a bit crumbly), then add the cream and beat a few seconds until smooth. Wrap in plastic and chill for several hours or overnight (dough can also be frozen).

Remove the dough and soften enough to roll by cutting it into several pieces and kneading them with your hand, then forming them back together into a disk. Tap the disk with your rolling pin, then roll it out quickly on a floured surface; once soft, it gets really soft. Lift the dough carefully into your tart pan, trimming the overhang to about ½”, and turn this overhand to the inside against the edge. Chill again for 15 minutes or so. Preheat the oven to 375 F while it chills.

Remove the pan and flute the edge or press it with a fork. Prick the bottom with fork, and line the pan with foil and some weight (beans, rice, etc.) or a smaller-size pan. Bake 10-12 minutes; remove the foil/weight or pan, and bake another 5 minutes or so, until golden. Cool on a rack.

Finishing the Tart

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Pour/spread the rhubarb curd into the baked pastry shell. Bake the tart for about 12-15 minutes, until firm. You could now serve this with maple whipped cream made with good heavy cream, or finish it with:

Maple Meringue

3 egg whites, reserved from making curd
¼ tea cream of tartar
2 T Grade B maple syrup
1/2 cup sugar

Beat the whites at medium speed with the cream of tartar and the syrup until thick and foamy. Raise the speed to high and beat, gradually adding the sugar, until the mixture forms marshmallow-fluffy, shiny peaks.

If you do not have a kitchen torch, heat the broiler. Lightly oil the inside and rim of a flan ring the size of the tart pan or an inch smaller, and place it, oiled rim down, on the tart. Spoon the meringue into the ring, spreading it neatly and evenly out to the edges with a rubber spatula. Dip the spatula into the center and around the circumference to pull soft peaks out of the meringue. (If you don’t have a flan ring, just pile the meringue on.) Place the tart under the broiler until lightly brown (or use your torch). Put the tart in the freezer for 30 minutes (or up to 4 hours) before serving). Cut firmly and cleanly (do not saw) with a sharp knife.

       

LCM First Anniversary

First, the coffee. I started writing about food on this blog a year ago this weekend, beginning as all my musings about cooking and eating do, in the morning, walking out with my coffee or, when the weather keeps me inside, at the kitchen window. With the exception of a few balmy days, it’s been a cool and breezy—and often rainy—spring after a raw winter, so most of my blog thinking and coffee drinking lately has been the latter. Looking out the window brings its own pleasures, though, particularly for someone like me who likes to observe from the outside (or, in this case, inside). Yesterday I had the treat of watching a mother wild turkey with her russet, energetic baby turkey as they foraged for food and she tried to keep him from plunging into the brush. In recent weeks, seeing a young deer I’d worried about all winter emerge not only alive but getting along well elicited a triumphant hurrah. This deer, one of a family of four, has had one leg severed at the elbow since I first saw him as a tiny fawn—from what? A hunter? Trap? Birth defect? If this three-legged deer can survive, then spring brings hope for us all.
The anniversary of Little Compton Mornings has come upon me suddenly, much like spring always does after a seemingly endless dark winter: you wake up one day and the grass is green, and it’s light when the day is done. Yet while a year seems to have flown by, on closer examination it’s possible to trace the passage of time through events, appointments, holidays, trips, milestones of work and family. It is life, not time, that is going by quickly.
So too with this blog. In the past year, I posted 53 times—one for good measure, I guess, like the extra candle on a cake. I look back amazed: more than 48,000 words and 304 photos (about 15% of those I took). I wrote about coffee, beef, cornmeal, rose hips, berries, vegetables, fish, flour, stone fruits, syrup. I made drinks, appetizers, soups, main courses, side dishes, breads, desserts, and provided the recipes. For someone used to throwing things together, this was a greater discipline even than making sure I did not miss a week of posting (I became religious about this). Sometimes I forgot to record what I was doing as I cooked, and had to reconstruct it. Another challenge was learning to take food photos, still a bit tricky even with a forgiving digital camera. Lesson number 1 (hard learned): turn off the flash.
At first I worried that I would run out of things to write about. Now, I can’t believe I ever thought that, and my real concern is finding the time to write about the things I’d like to—and in particular, to cook and provide well-documented recipes for those things. Cooking takes time, and I have often had to choose something that is not too labor intensive, and reserve those that are (like the lobster bisque) for special occasions. While I’ve managed a first pass at many classic Rhode Island ingredients and dishes, from coffee syrup to the debate over jonnycakes (thick or thin?), many await discussion in the coming year—the most egregious being, of course, the Trinity.
I’ve tried to look back and assess what kind of blog I write. This is neither idle navel-gazing nor a conceit: writing always takes on a life of its own. From a technical standpoint, the postings are longer than I expected and than they are for most blogs—the longest was 2092 words or some 8 double-spaced pages—and readers seem to like the depth. Every post carries a recipe. Not sure I knew I was getting into that. From a content standpoint, two things are pretty clear. My blog tends to showcase ingredients in a rather microscopic way—consistent with my notion of seasonality, but not something I had anticipated. And it is squarely in the homey, and home-cooking, category—something I had. For all its hominess, though, it has its characteristically (for me) investigative, information-based side. Part of the pleasure is in the knowing, the considering, the evaluating, the discussing. But not too seriously. Food is, in my blog, part of the conversation of life.
Through all this writing, it is, naturally, my readers that have motivated me. My readers seem to be readers and users and do not often comment on the blog itself—although I welcome and encourage that—but many of you have written me wonderful emails so full of appreciation and gratitude that I blushed with pride to read them. I can’t tell you how much this has meant to me as I sit here writing away on my own. I’ve also had the pleasure of meeting a few of you, which has been great fun. Thank you all.
To celebrate our year of Little Compton Mornings, I have made what I always asked my mother to make for my birthday: a pie. It’s too early for berries, and the lemons, a usual fallback, are not particularly nice. Chocolate, however, is always in season.
Anniversary Chocolate Cream Pie
Contrary to popular opinion, the “cream” in cream pie refers to the filling, not the topping. However, this old-fashioned pie can also be made with whipped cream instead of meringue; both are excellent and feel celebratory and indulgent. I depart from my usual lard or lard/shortening crust in favor of an all-butter crust for this pie, both for complementary flavor and for sturdiness beneath the custard filling. Nobody makes this pie anymore—yet men and women alike swoon over it. Let’s mark Little Compton Mornings’s anniversary by bringing it back. Serves 6.
The All-Butter Crust
This needs to be blind-baked, so plan ahead.
1 ½ cups a-p flour
2 T sugar
1/8 tea salt
4 oz (1 stick or ½ cup) cold unsalted butter, preferably cultured, high- butterfat
      (sometimes called “European style”)
3-5 T ice water
1 T heavy cream
Put the dry ingredients into the food processor with the metal blade. Add the butter, cut into at least 8 pieces. Pulse 15-20 times, until the mixture is crumbly but not so fine as to be sandy. With the motor running, add 3 T of the ice water and the cream, then add the remaining water gradually and stopping as soon as the dough comes together. Remove, pat gently into a disc, and refrigerate for an hour or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 425 F. Let the dough soften a bit and then roll it out on a floured board to 1/8” thick. Fit it comfortably into a 9” pie plate, trim and turn under the rim, crimp the edge, and prick the bottom and sides with a fork. (You can re-roll the scraps and make little turnovers filled with blackberry or other jam for baking with the pie crust and then sprinkling with sugar for a cook’s treat.) Chill the crust for an hour in the refrigerator or 20 minutes in the freezer.
Place a piece of foil inside and fill with dried beans, rice, or aluminum pie weights. Bake for 10 minutes; reduce the heat to 350 F and bake 10 minutes more. Lift out the foil and weights and bake until golden and crisp, about 5-10 minutes more.
The Chocolate Pudding

1/3 cup flour
2/3 cup sugar
Pinch salt
2 ¾ cups milk, heated to steaming
2 squares unsweetened chocolate
3 extra-large egg yolks
1 tea pure vanilla extract and 1 tea pure chocolate extract, or 2 tea vanilla
1 T unsalted butter
Combine the dry ingredients in a 3-qt saucepan, preferably one with sloped sides. Using a whisk, gradually stir in the milk over medium heat. Add the chocolate and whisk continuously; the mixture will amalgamate and then thicken. It should bubble gently. Cook 5 minutes more.
Remove the pan from the heat. Beat the egg yolks in a spouted cup or small bowl. Remove about ¼ cup of the chocolate mixture and stir it into the yolks until well blended; Add the tempered yolks to the pan. Return to the heat and cook, stirring, for another two minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the extract(s) and the butter. Set aside for half an hour, covered with a piece of plastic wrap.
The Meringue
3 extra-large egg whites
6 T sugar
Pinch salt
Beat the egg whites with the salt ‘til foamy, then gradually add the sugar, continuing to beat until they are very white, shiny, and thick, and form a beak when the beater is lifted. Be careful not to overbeat.
Finishing the Pie
Preheat the oven to 425 F. Pour the slightly cooled pudding into the pre-baked pie shell, rotating the plate to spread it; use a flat offset spatula or back of a spoon if necessary. Pile the meringue very gently onto the pudding, ensuring it overlaps the edge of the pie shell. Bake about 6-8 minutes, or until lightly golden. Cool to room temperature before serving (it is ethereal served this way, fresh). Refrigerate leftovers.


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To those of you who took the time to vote for me in Best of Rhode Island, thank you for your support.
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