The Culinary Kitten

Many of you know that I became a homeowner quite recently. With home ownership comes a litany of discoveries – some good (like vintage garden tools tucked away in a loft), some questionable (like a backyard light that turns itself on every night, but that you can’t locate a timer for), and some bad (a neighbor with a penchant for illegal fireworks regardless of the season) You take the good and do what you can to deal with the bad.  Along those lines, I thought I was doing the responsible thing by pulling out an overgrown and diseased rhubarb plant that was growing in the weed-ridden bed behind my attached garage last summer. I knew that Helen, the former owner of the house (now deceased) loved rhubarb and shared it with her neighbors, so I had very real pangs of regret. For reasons I can’t explain, I’ve always felt compelled to honor her memory and respect her traditions. Still after summing up the situation, I surmised that a fresh start was in order. I pulled out the old plant, weeded and amended the soil in preparation of bigger and better things. The neighbors would like brussels sprouts, right?

The rhubarb, however, having been a longtime resident of that bed, had absolutely no intention of going along with my plan:

born-again rhubarb.

After seeing the brilliant effort it made to the contrary this past spring, I could only nod in agreement.

Still – the inherent conundrum..what on god’s earth do I do with rhubarb? I recall my grandmother, Sadie, cooking down the stalks with sugar to make a warm compote that she served over vanilla ice cream. Charming, for sure, but I don’t find myself craving sweets very often, and if I wanted to ingest those types of calories, i would quickly locate a nearby cheeseburger.

I hated the thought of wasting perfectly good food in season, though..especially when it arrives in such quantity and volunteers itself so willingly. For two months, I made a mission of finding ways to love and appreciate the bounty that is my rhubarb.

As if by some marvelous stroke of culinary serendipity, I found my first inspiration just a few weeks later, having tasted a phenomenal rhubarb chutney and rhubarb and gin cocktail while dining at the home of my friends, Mori and Julie.

Because rhubarb cooks down so nicely, it’s really a no-brainer for chutney. Its somewhat singular flavor lends itself beautifully to whatever you want to throw in. I carmelized a shallot, threw in a bit of orange zest, some apple cider vinegar and enough brown sugar to just cut through the tartness. I added black peppercorns, some sea salt and a bit of fresh rosemary for good measure, and let it all simmer slowly until the rhubarb was soft, and the vinegar was reduced  and lost its bite. That afternoon we grilled an herb-rubbed pork tenderloin and had a few of our favorite Portland rocker boys over for cocktails and bocce ball. My friend, Brent, commented that while he dug the tenderloin, after trying it slathered with a little of the chutney, he didn’t want to go back to eating it without it.

Not being able to live by chutney alone, I recalled how much I’d dug the rhubarb gin cocktail that I was served at Mori’s.  Rhubarb makes for a tart, jewel-toned syrup that mixes very well with vodka, and also enhances the herbal complexity of a good gin. New Deal Distillery had recently released its Gin # 3 to the public, so not wanting to waste any time in welcoming our ginny new friend into the world, I mixed it with equal parts New Deal Vodka, a few tablespoons of the rhubarb syrup and a fill of San Pellegrino Limonata,because after all, I’m a big fan of the fizzy. I finished the cocktail with a few leaves of lemon balm, and declared it to be summer incarnate. My guess is that the syrup would also be lovely mixed with plain fizzy water, and topped with a few drops of Regan’s Orange Bitters to alter its reality just a bit.

A surprise birthday breakfast at my parent’s home a few months later gave me the perfect opportunity to expand my rhubarb repertoire even further. When my younger sister expressed an interest in making crepes, I offered to make a number of fillings, among them being a compote of rhubarb cooked down with fresh strawberries and infused with cinnamon and star anise. I finished the compote with a splash of locally made tangerine liqueur, and it made for very nice crepes, alone, or topped with fresh marscapone. Although I’m not a huge dessert fan, it’s nice to have a few impressive dessert-related tricks up one’s sleeve. This compote would incorporate beautifully into a whole plethora of other desserts – as a topping for a simple lemon pound cake, folded into creme anglaise, or, as grandma Sadie would have it, on top of a humble dish of vanilla ice cream.

As the summer drew to a close, the rhubarb continued to come in full force – stalk upon ruby stalk requiring a weekly harvest until I could barely keep up. Friends stopped pretending to be excited when I offered it, and I’d given up as much freezer space as I was willing to, so I decided to do the obvious and tried my hand at a makeshift rhubarb crisp. I stewed chunks of rhubarb with cinnamon, brown sugar and vanilla, and topped it with a crumbly mixture of butter, brown sugar and toasted chopped walnuts. Taste – fabulous – otherwordly, in fact. Appearance? Brown mush. My boyfriend wouldn’t even try it, and I was too embarrassed to give the pan I made for the neighbors to them. I could just picture the exchange “Here…I made you something” as I hand them a pan of something that might have been burped up by my garbage disposal. Fine. Being PR-minded, I understand that packaging is everything.  I quickly folded my delicious but homely crisp into cinnamony muffin batter alternated with fresh rhubarb chunks, poured it into tins, topped it with with cinnamon sugar, and baked. Perfect. I gave some away, and stuck some in the freezer. Parents dropping in unexpectedly? I can throw on a pot of coffee and crisp these up for about 7 minutes in a warm oven. Poof. Done.

By early Autumn, Mark Bittman came to my rescue. He wrote about a savory sauce that calls for rhubarb and saffron, to be used with pan-fried red snapper.  Yes, please. I took his basic idea and changed it according to my own liking and what i had on hand. My sauce incorporated rhubarb, shallots, orange zest, saffron and a tiny bit of chili pepper. Mark used fish, but I’m more of a shrimp girl, so I made skewers, threw a few on the grill with some sea salt and a squeeze of orange juice, and served them with the sauce. The sauce was smoky with a slight heat, sweet and savory and tart. I like it. I like it a lot. I would also like to use it for dipping panko breaded shrimp, so I think I’ll freeze some…given that shrimp doesn’t become a memory due to recent events in the Gulf. Remind me that we need to talk about the large shrimp farm operations that were threatening to put the small family operations there out of their life long businesses there well before the BP disaster. I’m not terribly psychic, but I have a pretty good idea of who’s going to come up with the short end of the stick and who’s going to gain in the post-spill world. Sigh.

Oh, yeah. We were talking about rhubarb.

So – in summation, yes. I finally get rhubarb, and since its well into October and mine doesn’t appear to be going anywhere soon, I’m going to continue to look for new ways to appreciate, enjoy and share it (ha – one stalk per trick or treater?). I know that its former mom, Helen would be happy, and I know my grandma, Sadie would approve.

My Best,

P