Dessert from the backyard

One of the things that I really want to achieve this summer is to grow most of our vegetables in our backyard garden. Last year we bought a share in a CSA, which provided more vegetables than we could eat each week (hello, kohlrabi!). After a long discussion about the convenience of having vegetables delivered vs. the work involved in planting a garden, we eventually decided to take the plunge and grow our own. Neither Fred nor I have ever tended a garden, so this is a learning experience for both of us. He pretty much left it to me to decided what to grow, so I'm going to start a few things from seed (lettuces, radishes, carrots, peppers) and a few from seedlings (tomatoes, herbs), which I'll pick up at a farmer's market. I plan to get the seeds and plants in the ground Memorial Day weekend. The frost will have ended by then, and the soil will be ready for planting.

But even before we tilled the soil, there were big, beautiful rhubarb plants growing at the back end of the garden. A little gem left behind by the previous owners and taken care of by Mother Nature. I hadn't done much to nurture them and they started to flower. I finally went out there this past weekend and hacked off the flowers, pushed those big (toxic!) leaves back, and found the ruby colored stems I've been reading about.

I don't think I've ever eaten rhubarb, let alone grown it, so I needed to find an expert who would know what to do with this vegetable. I looked online and scoured my cookbooks, and stumbled upon Laura Pensiero's Hudson Valley Mediterranean cookbook. Laura owns Gigi Trattoria in Rhinebeck, N.Y., and is a major proponent of farm-to-table cooking. I figured she would know exactly what to do with rhubarb. And did she ever: a delicious and simple compote of rhubarb and strawberries.


The really great thing about preparing this dessert was that it gets done in stages: chopped rhubarb gets added to sugar, honey, cornstarch and sits for 30 minutes (switch the laundry), next it gets heated and rests for another 30 minutes (pickup Vivi), then the berries get added (by Vivi, natch!), then it gets put on top of ice cream. Laura suggests putting it on pound cake, which I will definitely do the next time. But for Monday night's dessert we went for vanilla ice cream with rhubarb-berry compote. It was sweet, with a little bit of the tartness I expected from the rhubarb. Vivi ate it by the spoonful from the mixing bowl (I didn't dare tell her that rhubarb is actually a vegetable), and had two helpings with her ice cream. We have some left over and I'm thinking that it might work really well as a filling on a simple, rustic tart crust. Served warm with the rest of the ice cream? Guess what I'm doing this afternoon?




Here's the recipe.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Compote
(Adapted from Hudson Valley Mediterranean by Laura Pensiero)

1/4 cup cornstarch
3/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup honey
2 1/2 pounds rhubarb, washed, dried and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup quartered strawberries

Heat a metal mixing bowl in the oven just until it is hot. (I used a Dutch oven, which worked just fine). Remove the bowl from the oven and add the cornstarch, sugar, and honey (the heat of the bowl will help to melt the sugar and honey). Stir the honey, sugar, and cornstarch, and add the rhubarb. Coat the rhubarb with the sugar mixture and let it rest at room temperature for about 30 minutes. (The rhubarb will release its juices and the cornstarch will thicken it prior to cooking.)



Pour the mixture into a saucepan, along with all the accumulated liquid (this is where the Dutch oven came in handy). Cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until the rhubarb is fork-tender but not overcooked, about 10-15 minutes. Pour the compote into a heatproof bowl and let it cool to room temperature for another 30 minutes. Stir the berries into the cooled compote, and serve on ice cream.

I found that my compote was very thick after cooking, and I wanted to thin it a little. I had a mix of berries (raspberries, strawberries, blackberries) in the fridge. Vivi ate most of the berries as we were cooking, but the juice that was left over (about a 1/4 cup) was a great addition to the compote. It helped loosen it and it gave it even more berry flavor.