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.

       

Rhubarb Is For Mothers

It’s Mother’s Day, and naturally I’m thinking about rhubarb. If you are under 40, unless you grew up around a grandmother or great-grandmother, you probably have not had much experience with rhubarb. Rhubarb was wildly popular with grandparents, many of whom had their own patches, out back somewhere or alongside a driveway. A perennial that is one of the first vegetables to push its way through the ground in the early spring, it was always watched for with anticipation and greeted with what seemed to be misplaced excitement. The plant itself was sprawly and weedy, the leaves poisonous, and the admittedly pretty red stalks cooked down into a mush. As a child, it seemed to me that eating rhubarb was one of the many things peculiar to the strange ways of old people. No one else could possibly like it.
My grandmother adored rhubarb, and so did my mother—and she was not, I had to admit, all that old when I was a kid. Still, I shunned the stuff for years, as it was usually served up stewed in our house, which was my mother’s and grandmother’s favorite way to eat it. This pinky-beige mush did not tempt me. But eventually, rhubarb pie did; I am, it is well known, a sucker for pie. I quickly became a rhubarb convert—and stewed rhubarb is now one of my favorite ways to eat it, too. I’m sure my age has nothing to do with it. It’s just absolutely delicious.
Rhubarb is available now until early summer; sometimes, there is a second crop in the fall. This is one of many quirky things about this plant. Rhubarb is something that, because of its unique, astringent flavor, is delicious in hot weather; it makes, for example, thirst-quenching drinks and refreshing cold soups and salad dressings as well as the more standard jams, pies (it is, in fact, commonly known as “pie plant”), crisps, and sauces. It’s even nice eaten raw, like the celery it resembles, sprinkled with sugar. Given its hot-weather affinity, rhubarb really should have a season like June-September. But since it does not, I suggest freezing some for hot-weather use, including freezing some of the jam or sauces you might make now. Rhubarb sauce is very nice over creamy vanilla ice cream.
To freeze rhubarb (I provided information on buying and storing it in a recent Edible Rhody article), wash the stalks, trim the ends, and cut slim (1” stalks) crosswise into 1” chunks; for fatter stalks, slice them in half lengthwise, and string if needed, before cutting across. If you have a good freezer, you can pack it raw without sugar, freezing it as you do for berries, first on a cookie sheet and then sealing in double plastic bags. You can also blanch it for about a minute before packing, or pack it raw or blanched in a light syrup made with about ¾ cup sugar to each cup water. Commercially frozen rhubarb is also very good.
Rhubarb is excellent on its own, but I don’t think it’s ever met a fruit it didn’t like: it goes well with strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, pineapple, banana and other tropical fruits, apples, dates and figs, and citrus. It likes spice, especially ground or crystallized ginger, a traditional British addition (the British love rhubarb so much that John Cleese of Monty Python fame once wrote a song proclaiming that “eternal happiness is a rhubarb tart”). If you tire of cooking with it, and you have access to the leaves and roots, you can make insect repellant, cleaning products, or a rinse to lighten your hair. It’s a versatile and delicious plant.
Try some--in honor of your mother or grandmother, of course. Happy Mother's Day.
Spiced Pineapple-Rhubarb Conserve

Rhubarb is a natural for small batch preserving. Makes 2 pints.
3 cups rhubarb in ½” slices, about 6 slim stalks 
2 cups chopped fresh pineapple
2/3 cup chopped candied orange peel
½ cup chopped crystallized ginger
3 cups sugar
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
½ tea finely ground black pepper
½ cup coarsely chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)
Combine all ingredients except the nuts in a medium bowl and let macerate for 4 hours, stirring occasionally. In a non-reactive 4 qt pan (e.g., stainless steel or enameled cast iron), bring the mixture slowly to a boil, stirring, then reduce the heat to medium. Cook at a gentle boil, skimming during the first 5 minutes or so, until it sheets from a spoon, about 15 minutes. Stir in the nuts. Pour into clean jars and seal.
                                        

Drawing Down Inventory: Frozen Blueberries

I see from my calendar that it is March 15. As Caesar was so presciently warned, beware the ides of March! If you’re not careful, the first bumper crops of rhubarb* or asparagus will be here, and you will discover that you have not a square inch of freezer space in which to store them. Granted, this is not nearly so bad as being assassinated, but it can have its own fateful consequences. So, if you have not been doing so all winter—or if, like me, you have been but still have a good way to go on last summer’s fruits and vegetables before next summer’s comes in—it’s time to start drawing down inventory with a vengeance worthy of Brutus.
Start with the early-season items and work your way forward. My small amount of rhubarb is gone. I never froze any asparagus, so no pressure on that account. I have one jar of strawberry jam left, which I have moved from the freezer to the refrigerator for present consumption. Up next: the blueberries.
Frozen blueberries are an excellent substitute for fresh for most cooking and baking, from sauces and jams to cakes, pancakes, and muffins. The only thing I don’t like them for are pies and crisps; some people, not naming names, do use them for these purposes, but I think their water content is too high, both requiring too much added starch and sugar and having lost some of the requisite intensity of flavor.
For this reason I rarely make blueberry muffins with fresh blueberries: in season, they go into pies. But I love a good blueberry muffin, and have a few favorite recipes. One, which I will spare you, is an old-fashioned small, plain but rich muffin made with all lard; it is, truth be told, the one of which I am most fond. Another is a much larger, cakier, considerably sweeter muffin purported to be the original Jordan Marsh blueberry muffin recipe. One is always coming across recipes claiming to be the original this or that, but I think mine just might be authentic. I have had it since the 1970s, and acquired it while I was living in Boston—I think it was printed in the Boston Globe. Jordan Marsh was in its heyday at the time, and its flagship store, where the muffins were sold, was mere steps from my office. I ate them several times a week, and this recipe produces the real thing.
Jordan Marsh Blueberry Muffins
These muffins are loaded with berries, providing an excellent way to draw down your inventory. They are very good. The recipe is exactly as it was printed, except that I have added details to the instructions. Makes 12 large muffins, or 8 huge ones.
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
2 cups a-p flour
1 cup sugar
2 large brown eggs
½ cup milk
1 tea pure vanilla extract
2 tea baking powder
½ tea salt
2 ½ cups blueberries
2 tea sugar for sprinkling on top
Preheat the oven to 375 F. Grease a standard muffin tin, including the top surface. Use paper liners if you like; Jordan Marsh didn't, but they are easier to remove and freeze better if you do.
With an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar on medium-high speed until light and fluffy; reduce to low and add the vanilla and the eggs, one at a time, beating until well blended; ramp up the speed again to medium-high and beat for another minute, or until you have a thick but still very fluffy batter. Sift the dry ingredients together and add them at low speed to the creamed mixture alternately with the milk, beginning and ending with the dry. Mash ½ cup blueberries with a fork (you will need to bring ½ cup of your frozen ones to room temperature or nuke them for about 20 seconds first) and stir them in with a wooden spoon, which will turn the batter a uniform taupe-y purple. Gently fold in the 2 cups whole frozen berries.
Spoon the batter into the tin, piling it high in each cup. Sprinkle the tops with the extra sugar; you can add a little cinnamon or cardamom if you like. Bake for 30 minutes or more, until golden, and allow to cool in the pan on a rack for an additional 30 minutes before turning out, as they are very tender.

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* Speaking of rhubarb, I have a short article on this amazing vegetable in the current issue of Edible Rhody magazine.