Honey-baked rhubarb
Tonight we had roast lamb followed by Honey-baked Rhubarb. I would never have thought of doing this with rhubarb - I guess actually my rhubarb repertoire is pretty limited. About the only thing I ever do with is it Apples & Rhubarb (and custard - yum!). I also love Rhubarb & Ginger Jam, but I keep not getting around to learning how to make jam from my Mum. Maybe we'll actually manage to get organised some time this year :-) Anyway, the rhubarb in the garden really did need a trim, and I saw this recipe in an email from Hugh Fearley-Whittingstall (River Cottage) and it sounded pretty good to me - and dead easy to make.
Honey-baked rhubarb
Try it on pancakes, or spooned onto muesli or thick yoghurt, or serve with vanilla ice cream (so said Hugh in his email, but remember he is writing from the UK, where it's summer. I was thinking maybe with custard... but we had some King Island Cream in the fridge (thanks to my work!) so we had that instead - oh yum! It went really well... And having tried it, I'm not sure it would go with custard after all)
1kg rhubarb, cut into 5-10cm lengths (10cm is too long, unless you like slurping up rhubarb like spaghetti :-) I say the shorter the better)
Juice and finely grated zest of 1 orange
4 tbsp runny honey
Put rhubarb in an ovenproof dish large enough to hold it in a single layer (we didn't, because we had the roast veggies in the only dish that might have fitted them that way - it still came out ok), then scatter over the orange zest & pour in the juice. Trickle over the honey & gently mix the whole lot together. Cover loosely with foil (whoops, we missed reading this bit! so ours was bake uncovered. It came out fine though!) & bake in an oven preheated to 150°C for 45 mins - 1 hour (our oven was at 200C cooking the roast, so we cooked it at that temp, but only for about 30 mins), until the rhubarb is tender, giving it a gentle stir halfway through. The pieces of rhubarb should keep their shape rather than cook to a mush (many of ours were no longer holding their shape, but we didn't mind because we don't mind our rhubarb mushy :-)).
It was indeed dead easy to make, and it tasted super-delicious too! I definitely recommend it! Oh, and a little serve was plenty - I only put a "normal" amount in our dessert-bowls, but we were full by about half-way through. Admittedly, it could be because we'd stuffed ourselves silly with roast dinner first, but I think it was actually that's it's quite a rich taste... Anyway, Peter is going to try some on muesli tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes too...
Honey-baked rhubarb
Try it on pancakes, or spooned onto muesli or thick yoghurt, or serve with vanilla ice cream (so said Hugh in his email, but remember he is writing from the UK, where it's summer. I was thinking maybe with custard... but we had some King Island Cream in the fridge (thanks to my work!) so we had that instead - oh yum! It went really well... And having tried it, I'm not sure it would go with custard after all)
1kg rhubarb, cut into 5-10cm lengths (10cm is too long, unless you like slurping up rhubarb like spaghetti :-) I say the shorter the better)
Juice and finely grated zest of 1 orange
4 tbsp runny honey
Put rhubarb in an ovenproof dish large enough to hold it in a single layer (we didn't, because we had the roast veggies in the only dish that might have fitted them that way - it still came out ok), then scatter over the orange zest & pour in the juice. Trickle over the honey & gently mix the whole lot together. Cover loosely with foil (whoops, we missed reading this bit! so ours was bake uncovered. It came out fine though!) & bake in an oven preheated to 150°C for 45 mins - 1 hour (our oven was at 200C cooking the roast, so we cooked it at that temp, but only for about 30 mins), until the rhubarb is tender, giving it a gentle stir halfway through. The pieces of rhubarb should keep their shape rather than cook to a mush (many of ours were no longer holding their shape, but we didn't mind because we don't mind our rhubarb mushy :-)).
It was indeed dead easy to make, and it tasted super-delicious too! I definitely recommend it! Oh, and a little serve was plenty - I only put a "normal" amount in our dessert-bowls, but we were full by about half-way through. Admittedly, it could be because we'd stuffed ourselves silly with roast dinner first, but I think it was actually that's it's quite a rich taste... Anyway, Peter is going to try some on muesli tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes too...