Rhubarb ginger crisp

Hey, remember last time when I wrote about how much I like asparagus? Well guess what else I like? Rhubarb! Yep. It's true. And now that I have my own yard, I can actually grown some to enjoy for next year.

But for this year, I had to rely on a rhubarb delivery from Lakefield. It was soon going to expire in my fridge, so I thought I should use it up. I decided to try Jamie Oliver's recipe for a rhubarb ginger crumble, since it's a combination I already like. The results were good, but frankly I've made a better crisp on my own, just throwing some crystalized ginger and a vanilla bean in with the fruit before covering with topping.

But this post isn't about my creation, it's about Jamie's. So here we go...

Start off by measuring the chopped rhubarb. You need two pounds and you can see I was just short of it, but then I went back and stole as much good stuff from the ends I had discarded to top up the bowl.

Next, you cook the fruit down with some brown sugar. This is an interesting step, I guess designed to get rid of some of the moisture in the rhubarb. It worked, but I don't really mind soupy crisps anyway.

Then you add the topping and pop it in the oven.

Here's what it looks like with a couple of helpings removed. Tasty, but not overly gingery, which is too bad.

Rhubarb and sticky stem ginger crumble

Recipe from Jamie at Home

•1kg rhubarb, trimmed and sliced into large chunks
• 200g soft brown sugar
zest and juice of 1 orange
• 100g plain flour
• 100g cold butter
• 100g oats
• 2 pieces of stem ginger, chopped

Preheat your oven to 180°C/350°F/gas 4. Put the rhubarb and half the sugar into a pan. Add the orange juice and zest, put a lid on top, bring to the boil and simmer for a few minutes. Remove the lid and simmer for around 5 more minutes, until the rhubarb has softened slightly. Spoon into an ovenproof baking dish or individual dishes and spread out evenly across the bottom.

To make your crumble topping, use your fingers to lightly rub together the flour and butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the oats, the rest of the sugar and the stem ginger. (If you like, you can make the crumble topping in a food processor. Just whack in the flour, butter, sugar and stem ginger and whiz up. Add the oats for the last 10 seconds.) Sprinkle the crumbs over the rhubarb and bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 45 minutes, or until the rhubarb is bubbling up and the crumble is golden.

Asparagus soup

I love asparagus. It's really one of the very first signs on spring, and seeing those green stalks at the market remind me of many more good things to come.

I've made a lot of asparagus soup in my day, and this one had much more veggie content than I'm used to. It's good, but not spectacular. Part of the problem, I think, is that I found it quite salty, due to the boxed chicken stock I bought. Usually I rely on my own stock, or stuff I buy from the butcher shop. Both are much less salty and I wish I'd used them in this soup.

Ah well, live and learn.

On to the green stuff....

Onions, celery and leeks all chopped and ready to go. Think the final product might be a bit green?

Cooking down in a bit of olive oil.

Adding the chopped raw asparagus. More green!

And the final product, after a blitz with the handblender. Not as brightly green as I had hoped, and a bit stringy. Next time I'll not be quite so lazy and break out the regular blender.

Creamy asparagus soup

From Jamie at Home, by Jamie Oliver

Ingredients
800g asparagus, woody ends removed
olive oil
• 2 medium white onions, peeled and chopped
• 2 sticks of celery, trimmed and copped
• 2 leeks, trimmed and chopped
• 2 litres good-quality chicken or vegetable stock, preferably organic
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 10 small very fresh free-range or organic eggs *I didn't do the egg bit
• 8 slices of ciabatta bread
• a knob of butter
• extra virgin olive oil

Chop the tips off your asparagus and put these to one side for later. Roughly chop the asparagus stalks. Get a large, deep pan on the heat and add a good lug of olive oil. Gently fry the onions, celery and leeks for around 10 minutes, until soft and sweet, without colouring. Add the chopped asparagus stalks and stock and simmer for 20 minutes with a lid on. Remove from the heat and blitz with a hand-held blender or in a liquidizer. Season the soup bit by bit (this is important) with salt and pepper until just right. Put the soup back on the heat, stir in the asparagus tips, bring back to the boil and simmer for a few more minutes until the tips have softened.

Just before I’m ready to serve the soup, I get a wide casserole-type pan on the heat with 8 to 10cm of boiling water. Using really fresh eggs, I very quickly crack all 10 into the water. Don’t worry about poaching so many at the same time. They don’t have to look perfect. A couple of minutes and they’ll be done, as you want them to be a bit runny. Toast your ciabatta slices. Using a slotted spoon, remove all the poached eggs to a plate and add a knob of butter to them. To serve, divide the soup between eight warmed bowls and place a piece of toast into each. Put a poached egg on top, cut into it to make it runny, season and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.

Leftover lunch

Last weekend I had an open house, and while I had hopes of a warm and sunny day so that people could lounge in my backyard, it wasn't to be. Last Saturday was pretty miserably cold and rainy, but despite all that, the party was still a lot of fun! Thanks to everyone for coming and helping to warm my new house!

Given that I was running around cleaning and getting prepared right up until the last minute, I neglected to take pictures of the food. But, all modesty aside, I think the spread was pretty good. I had fun thinking about what I would serve and there was a nice selection of choices.

Here's a look at some of the leftovers.


The tooth-picked items are chiorizo sausage stuffed inside a medjool date. A nice combination of the spicy and sweet, and pretty easy as well. All that's required is to pit the dates, and take the casing off the sausage. Tip: much easier to do this before the sausages are sliced into coins.

Also on a toothpick is a red pepper wrapped cube of manchego cheese.

Not pictured is the goat cheese and sun dried tomato bites.

On the cracker is the artichoke/olive bruschetta. I served this on crostini, and then we had the leftovers the next day over pasta with parmesan cheese. Really good!

None of the sweets made it to the plate, but I made these lemon bars on they day of, and they were yummy.

Artichoke-Olive Crostini
Adapted from Mario Batali

1 garlic clove, peeled and smashed
1 cup large green pitted olives
1 tablespoon capers, rinsed and drained
1 15-ounce can of artichoke hearts, drained
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1. Preheat the oven to 400°F. In a food processor, process the garlic, olives, capers, artichoke hearts and olive oil to a coarse paste.

Do ahead: The olive paste can be refrigerated for 2 days. Let it return to room temperature before using.

Sun-Dried Tomato and Goat Cheese Bites
From What Would Brian Boitano Make?

1 (8-ounce) log fresh goat cheese, chilled
1 cup pistachio nuts, finely chopped
20 sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil
1/2 bunch fresh basil leaves
Directions
Special equipment: 20 small skewers or cocktail toothpicks

Fill a pitcher with hot water. Dip a knife into the hot water and slice the goat cheese log in half lengthwise. Slice each half into 10 pieces making sure to dip the knife into the hot water in between slicing to ensure a nice clean cut. Roll each piece of goat cheese into balls approximately 1/2-inch in diameter and put onto a cookie sheet lined with waxed paper.

Add the chopped pistachio nuts to a shallow bowl. Roll a goat cheese ball into the pistachio nuts and coat 1/2 of the ball. Return to the sheet pan and repeat with the remaining goat cheese balls.
Drain the oil from the tomatoes and put onto a plate lined with a paper towel.

Skewer a goat cheese ball onto the skewer. Lay a basil leaf on top a sun-dried tomato. Fold the tomato in half around the basil leaf and add to the skewer with the goat cheese. Repeat with remaining skewers. Arrange on a serving platter, cover and keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

Fun with falfels

I made falafels for the first time a few weeks ago, and it wasn't a bad experiment. I didn't expect them to be quite as good as what you can get from a restaurant or mid-east food shop, simply by virtue of the fact that those falafels are always deep fried and thereby inherently crispy and tasty. I have never deep fried anything in my life and don't intend to start now, so my falafels would be slighlty less crisp, but hopefully just as yummy -- or better.

I found a recipe online that looked approachable, and gave it a go. The ingredients are pretty standard: chick peas and a bit of spices for flavour. Easy peasy. (get it?)

Here's the mix prior to being "patty-fied". I think I would have had better luck with full-sized food processor at my disposal. My mini one got quite a workout with this batch and its wee motor was near to smoking. If this batch looks dry, it was. I probably would have achieved a finer mash in a larger machine, and that likely would have kept the mix together better.

Here they are cooking away. Let me warn you that these little patties are like sponges for the oil. I was quite mean with the fat I put in the pan, and it was gone within seconds. It's very tempting to keep adding more, but I left it as is. Again, more oil likely would have resulted in crispier patties, but I opted for health over crunch this time around.

And here's the finished result, nestled in a pita, topped with some cumin yoghurt and a few cucumber slices. These falafels came together quite quickly and made a really tasty lunch. I won't pretend that my patties stayed together, or were at all crunchy, but they were good. This recipe yields a generous amount, and the falafels themselves are nicely spiced and full of flavour. They were best warm, drizzled with tart yoghurt, but they also weren't too bad cold either when I had the leftovers in a salad the next day.

Next time I might opt for a tablespoon or two of tahini in the mix to see if that keeps the patties together better. I read several recipes that called for this, but I didn't have any on hand, and therefore didn't use. It probably what makes for a more moist falafel that doesn't fall apart.

Falafel
Recipe from Nigel Slater

for 2
2 x 400g tins chickpeas (*I used cooked from dry peas, likely 1 1/2 cups)
6 plump cloves of garlic, crushed
2 tsps ground coriander
2 tsps ground cumin
1 medium onion, chopped
2 tbsps plain flour
1 tbsp chopped parsley
groundnut oil for deep-frying

These fluffy chickpea fritters from Israel are, to my mind, the finest street food of all. They are easy enough to make at home, either in the traditional manner, as deep-fried, slightly flattened balls, or as little flat patties cooked in shallow fat.

Drain, rinse and dry the chickpeas. Blend in a food processor with the garlic, spices and onion till smooth. Scoop into a bowl and stir in the flour and the parsley. Season with salt and pepper.

Stir the mixture thoroughly - it should be thick enough to roll into balls. With floured hands, roll the chickpea mixture into balls about the size of golf balls, maybe a little smaller. Deep-fry the balls in 10cm inches hot fat. Alternatively, flatten them into patties and shallow-fry them for 2 minutes on each side, till crisp.

Serve them hot, stuffed into warm pitta bread. Traditionally, a cucumber and tomato salad would be stuffed in there too. Although tahine is one of the traditional lubricants for these crisp fritters, I much prefer yoghurt. Particularly when it has had a little cayenne pepper and some chopped mint stirred into it and is spooned over the falafel as you eat.

Garden goings on

I totally lucked out in the garden department with my new house. The previous owners had definite green thumbs and I'm reaping the benefits. It has been fun these past few weeks to see what's popping up, almost on a daily basis. I just hope I don't manage to wreck everything by the end of the summer!

Here's a look at what's going on....

I thought for the longest time I had a magnolia tree in the backyard, but then when I saw all the other magnolia trees in bloom, I realized it wasn't. But this week, the tree has sprouted these pretty yellow blossoms. Still not sure what it is, but I like it.

This is the curly willow in the backyard.

These weird pink flowers bloomed really early and seem to be sticking around. Not sure what they are either.

And I was so happy to see lots of grape hyacinths in the front. I love them!

So much so that I picked them and put them on my kitchen window sill. Pretty, right?

Pita pizza

This isn't really a recipe per se, but it does make a quick and easy meal, so I thought I would share.

What you need is a small pita (I like whole wheat) and a bunch of toppings. I generally favour a Greek style, so I start with some tapenade for the base, probably a tablespoon, spread over the pita with the back of a spoon.

Then you go to town with the toppings...

You really can use whatever you have lying around. I sometimes use leftover chicken, usually roasted, but a rotisserie will work just as well. Add some sliced mushrooms, peppers, red onion, a bit of fresh or dried thyme, and voila! Finish off with some crumbled feta, a bit of black pepper and a drizzle of olive oil.

Into the oven (350) for 15 minutes or so, until the cheese melts and the pita is crips, and you've got dinner. Told you it was quick and easy!