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Scallops in coconut lemon sauce

13 May

I wasn’t able to start cooking supper until 5:30 last night.  I always want to have supper on the table by 6 o’clock, so this gave me a very tight schedule.  Supper turned out to be delicious, though, and I pronounced it so on Facebook.  I’ve had a couple of requests for recipes, so here I am.

Michael had already put rice in the the rice cooker, and I had a bag of frozen bay scallops sitting in a sinkful of water.  I peeked into the fridge to see what we had and came up with the following.  Measurements are approximate, as I was making this up on the fly.  Both recipes make about four servings.

SCALLOPS IN COCONUT LEMON SAUCE

  • 2 tbsp coconut oil
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • white and light green part from 1 leek, well washed and chopped
  • one bag of frozen bay scallops, thawed(ish)
  • 1 or 2 tomatoes, chopped (I used a handful of halved grape tomatoes)
  • half a can of coconut milk (don’t skimp on the quality!)
  • 3-5 tbsp lemon juice (to taste)
  • 1-2 tsp honey
  • 1/2 tsp celery seed
  • 1/4 tsp ground cloves (just a scant whiff of this)
  • 1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)
  • 1 tbsp tapioca starch or cornstarch
  • fresh ground pepper

Melt coconut oil in a saucepan.  Add  chopped onion and chopped leek and cook for a couple of minutes to soften.

Add scallops and cook for two minutes.  (Mine were still half frozenish, and I think that helped them from getting overcooked.  If they’re fresh or completely thawed, you might try adding them later in the recipe.)

Add tomatoes, coconut milk, lemon juice, honey, celery seed, cloves, and salt.  Simmer for a few minutes at medium heat to let the tomatoes cook a little.

Dissolve starch in a couple of tablespoons of cool water.  Stir into the sauce and allow to thicken.  Serve over hot rice with a sprinkle of fresh ground pepper.  This would also be good on pasta.

HERBED ZUCCHINI WEDGES

While I was waiting for the onion to soften and the scallops to cook and the sauce to thicken, I prepared zucchini for my vegetable side.

  • 2 zucchinis, slicked into pieces three inches long and a 1/4 inch thick.
  • olive oil
  • 1/2 tbsp dried or ground rosemary
  • 1/2 tbsp dried or ground tarragon
  • salt and pepper

Arrange zucchini slices on a foil-lined cookie sheet and drizzle them with good-quality olive oil.

Sprinkle ground herbs over zucchini.  (I don’t like eating those needly bits of rosemary, so I crushed my dried rosemary and dried tarragon with a mortar and pestle.  I think this really brings out the flavour of the herbs.)

Salt and pepper to taste.

Place under broiler and broil to desired softness.  (I think mine took around 5 minutes.)  Keep an eye  out because zucchini cooks quickly!

The resulting plates were beautiful, but we were too busy eating to take a picture.  But go ahead and imagine the green zucchini, white scallops, and red tomatoes.  Hmm, I’m thinking a splash of wine wouldn’t have gone amiss here.

Bon appetit!

Banana bread for the masses

23 Jul

I used to make banana bread on a pretty regular basis.  I don’t anymore for two reasons.  One is that there are banana monsters in my house, which means I rarely have any overripe bananas around.  Two is because I haven’t done much baking at all since we went gluten-free (not to mention egg- and dairy-free).

Last weekend I was motivated to try, though, so I Googled “gluten-free” banana bread and came up with a winner on my first click.  The recipe came from Pattycake.ca, and I am copying it here, noting the slight changes I made.

Easy Gluten-free Banana Bread from Pattycake.ca

Ingredients / Directions:

Combine:

  • 1 c brown rice flour
  • 1 c corn flour (not cornmeal) or brown rice flour
  • 2 Tbsp starch (tapioca starch or corn starch)
  • 1/2 tsp sea salt
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 1 tsp gluten-free baking powder

Combine separately:

  • 3 med-lg very ripe bananas – mashed
  • 2 eggs (If making this vegan, soak 5 tsp flaxmeal in 6 tbsp hot water for five minutes and add to wet ingredients.  also increase baking powder to 1-1/2 tsp and add another half a banana.)
  • 1/3 c honey, maple syrup, or agave nectar (or 1/2 c sucanat or brown sugar)
  • 1/2 c milk or milk substitute
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 1/4 – 1 tsp freshly grated lemon or orange zest (optional — but not really)
  • 1/2 c chopped walnuts, pecans, chocolate chips, chopped dates, apricots, or other dried fruit (optional)
  • a few dashes of cinnamon and nutmeg

Mix wet and dry until just incorporated. If adding nuts/chocolate/fruit, fold it into batter. Pour into a generously greased and dusted loaf pan (I use a glass pan). Bake at 350 for about 55min – a toothpick inserted in center should come out clean.

If using all honey or agave nectar, your loaf may brown too quickly. If you notice this, lower the oven to 325 and/or loosely cover the top of the loaf with some foil.

Quite a few of my non-gluten-free friends tried this loaf, and everyone agreed that it was yummy!  I tried it last week with all rice flour (half brown, half white) and today I tried it with half corn flour, which I preferred, but I’d take it either way.  Mmmm, pass the vegan margarine, please.  (Or butter for me!)

Fruit pizza again! (And, shhhhhh, vegan…)

13 May

Some of my long-time readers may remember this post, in which I shared the recipe for Michael’s favourite dessert, fruit pizza.  It’s a tradition for me to make it for him for his birthday.  Sadly, since it contains both flour and dairy, it’s off Michael’s list of can-haves.

I put my thinking cap on,  revved up the creative engine, and rolled up my sleeves (enough metaphors yet?) to work on making it Michael-friendly; that would mean gluten-free and vegan*.

The crust came out great on the first try, but I failed at my first attempt at the filling when I used coconut milk and agar-agar.  Happily, I came up with a winner using cornstarch.  Sometimes it takes a bit of experimentation and yes, even failure.  But the end results are oh-so-sweet.

Fawn’s All-Vegan All-Yum Gluten-Free Fruit Pizza

FOR THE CRUST

  • 1/4 cup Earth Balance margarine
  • 1/4 cup coconut oil
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup white rice flour
  • 1/2 cup oat flour (I just processed some wheat-free oats in my food chopper)
  • 1/2 cup oats
  • 1/2 cup ground or finely chopped pecans (love my food chopper!)
  • 1 mashed banana

FOR THE FILLING

  • 1 can (400 mL) coconut milk.
    • NOTE: Use good-quality coconut milk and don’t skimp on the fat.  After taste-testing several kinds, we settled on Aroy brand for our “every day” coconut milk needs, and that’s what I used for this filling.  I would also recommend Thai Kitchen’s organic full-fat coconut milk,which is very sweet and luxuriously creamy.  Rooster brand is disgusting, plus full of additives; just don’t do it.  (I’m so sorry, Rooster brand; your oyster sauce is great, but your coconut milk is grody to the max.)  (Now where was I?)
  • 3 tbsp maple syrup
  • 2 tbsp cornstarch
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • fruit for topping (strawberries, kiwis, bananas, canned sliced peaches, canned mandarin segments, raspberries, blueberries, or whatever else you have on hand)

FOR THE GLAZE

  • 1/4 cup apricot jam or orange marmalade
  • 1 teaspoon water

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. To make the crust, melt the margarine and coconut oil, then blend in sugar.  Add flours, oats, pecans, and the mashed banana.  Spread onto a pizza pan.  I found that the oils made this batter difficult to spread using a wooden spoon, but using my hands to pat it in place worked very well.  Bake at 375°F until the edges brown (around 10 minutes).  Because of the banana, this crust is a bit cakier and takes longer to bake.  After the edges browned, I used the broiler to crisp up and brown the top of the crust, which took just a few minutes.  Watch carefully so that you don’t burn it!  Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.
    • The final crust was cookie-like and softened up to a nice chewy texture after being refrigerated with the topping on it.  It did taste quite oat-y compared to the original, but I rather liked that.  If you prefer less of an oat flavour, I think you could safely replace some or all of the oat flour with more rice flour.
  2. For the filling, shake the can of coconut milk to blend the fat and liquid.  Pour it into a medium-sized pot and set the heat to medium.  Dissolve the cornstarch in several tablespoons of cool water, then stir it into your coconut milk.  Add the maple syrup and lemon juice.  (You could also add vanilla, but I didn’t, as it doesn’t agree with Michael.)  As the mixture heats up, be sure to stir continuously to avoid starch lumps.  The cornstarch will start to work its magic, thickening up the coconut milk.  When it reaches the consistency of pudding, remove from heat.  Allow to cool before spreading it onto the crust.  It will thicken up a little more when it has been refrigerated.
  3. After spreading the coconut milk onto the crust, decorate with your fruit toppings as desired.
  4. Mix the jam and water together and press through a sieve.  Use a pastry brush or silicone basting brush to spread the glaze gently over the fruit.
    • I cheated and added several tablespoons of boiling water and didn’t bother straining.  (That’s why the fruit is so shiny in the picture!)  The glaze seals off the fruit to keep it from oxidizing too quickly.  It also adds sweetness, so even if you use less than perfectly sweet fruit, the final dessert will still be yummilicious.  In fact, I quite enjoyed the tartness of my not-quite-ripe-enough kiwi.
  5. Cover the whole pizza with saran wrap and chill until set, probably at least overnight is best.
    • It’s also a good idea to put a bigger pizza pan underneath, if you have one.  The original fruit pizza recipe tended to get quite syrupy and drippy after refrigerating; I didn’t have that problem with this one, but I’m not sure if that was because of the fruit I picked or because of my blasphemous treatment of the glaze, so unless you enjoy cleaning a sticky refrigerator, better safe than sorry.

Although there are a few more ingredients to the crust, this recipe really isn’t any more difficult than the original fruit pizza, and it’s just as pretty and every bit as delicious.  Even the fruit pizza addict agrees!  (There would be photos of him enjoying the fruits of my labours, but of course, he scarfed it much too quickly for a camera to capture the action.  Next time I’ll use the sport setting.)

*No, we’re not vegan, but when you can’t have eggs or dairy, pretty much any dessert you eat is going to be vegan. Unless you’re into chicken breast on your desserts…

Michael-safe cornbread

19 Mar

When we first learned about all of Michael‘s food allergies, I went into high-creativity gear and started making all sorts of new things.  I was excited to post recipes about them but couldn’t without giving away answers to his “Villainous Vittles” competition.  But lately I seem to have lost my enthusiasm for cooking and creating new things, so there haven’t been any recipe posts.  Until tonight!

Baking has been very challenging since we’ve had to go gluten, egg, and dairy-free.  Gluten is the stretchy “glue” that gives baked goods their texture and replacing wheat flour often means mixing together all sorts of other exotic flours, the very thought of which makes me tired.

So imagine my pleasure when this cornbread turned out great on the first try!  Plus it was easy-peasy.  Now, I know some people are very particular about their cornbread, but as far as I’m concerned, this stuff is just as good as the flour-and-eggs version I used to make from the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.
I found this recipe on a vegan cooking website called Notes from the Vegan Feast Kitchen and I’ll love Google forever if only for this.  Below is the recipe, copied and pasted directly from the other blog, with my notes in square brackets.

BRYANNA’S VEGAN ALL-CORN CORNBREAD
9″ square panful

I adapted this from a recipe in “The Best Light Recipe” by Editors of Cook’s Illustrated magazine.

  • 1 1/3 cup yellow cornmeal [I used Bob's Red Mill Corn Grits, which gave things a lovely gritty texture]
  • 2 Tbs. plus 2 tsp. (8 tsp.) sugar
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. baking soda
  • another 2/3 cup cornmeal
  • 2/3 cup boiling water
  • 1 tbs. lemon juice plus [I'd run out of lemons AND bottled lemon juice, so I used apple cider vinegar instead]
  • soymilk or nut milk to make 2 cups [I used PC Blue Menu Original soy milk]
  • 1 Tbs. ground golden flaxseed [This is often used as an egg-replacer in vegan cooking, but there's so little of it and it doesn't get mixed with hot water by itself, so I'm not sure it's really necessary]
  • 2 Tbs. melted Earth Balance [I was too lazy to do this, plus we don't like the taste of the stuff, so I substituted 2 tablespoons of canola.  I did use Earth Balance to grease the pan, though.]

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Mix together the first cornmeal, sugar, salt, baking powder, and soda in a medium bowl.

In another bowl mix together the 2/3 cup cornmeal and the boiling water and stir well. Stir in the lemon juice/soymilk mixture, flaxseed and melted Earth Balance.

Pour this into the dry mixture and mix briefly. Pour into a well-greased 9″ square baking pan. Bake for 25 minutes or until it tests done and is crusty on top.

Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per square [cut into 9 pieces]): 157.5 calories; 24% calories from fat; 4.3g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 341.8mg sodium; 264.0mg potassium; 27.4g carbohydrates; 2.6g fiber; 5.2g sugar; 24.8g net carbs; 3.7g protein; 3.0 points.

I wasn’t sure it was cooked all the way through, as it was still a bit moist inside when I cut it (but just couldn’t wait any longer, with a hungry Halia on my hands!)  I found it was particularly tasty after it had cooled, and the extra moisture disappeared.  Halia, Amanda, Michael, and I all loved this cornbread, right down to the last square that got gobbled up the next day.  And I didn’t even get a picture!

Thai red curry

21 Jan

Kelli, aka Captain Momma, asked me for the curry recipe from this post and I typed it up for her in less than ten minutes.  Since I plan to be in bed before midnight for once, I figured it would substitute for a post.

We’ve only ever tried this with chicken, and we cheat because we use Indian curry paste (which is easy to find) rather than Thai, so I guess we’ve never had the “authentic” stuff.  I don’t think Michael ever follows the recipe exactly anymore, but it’s always danged good!

Thai Red Curry with Beef or Chicken from The New Canadian Basics Cookbook (Carol Ferguson)
If you’re not familiar with Thai cooking, this easy recipe is a pleasant introduction to typical flavours.  Adjust the curry paste to taste (Thai curry pase is very hot).

1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp (or to taste) red curry paste
1/2 cup chopped onion
3/4 lb beef stir-fry strips or boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into thin strips
1 sweet red pepper, cut into thin strips
3/4 cup coconut milk (Michael always uses to whole can and gets extra sauce, so he probably also uses extra curry paste to compensate)
1 tbsp fish sauce
1 tbsp lime or lemon juice (we always use lime)
3 cups cooked jasmine rice

In large skillet over medium-high heat, heat oil.  Add curry paste and cook, stirring, for 30 seconds.  Add onion; cook, stirring, for 1 minute.  Add beef or chicken strips; cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until almost cooked through.  Add red pepper; cook, stirring, for 1 minute.  Stir in coconut milk, fish sauce, and lime juice.  Bring to simmer; cook, stirring often, for about 3 minutes.  Add more fish sauce (for saltiness) if needed.  Serve over jasmine rices.  Makes 2 to 3 servings.

Hot and Sour Soup

7 Dec

I have seven draft posts saved as we speak, but neither the time nor the attention span to finish any of them in a thoughtful manner right now. So I am totally copping out momentarily filling the void by presenting you with one of my mom’s delicious and authentic Chinese recipes: classic hot and sour soup.  (Thanks to Jenny for the suggestion!)  I realize there are no amounts here, so for that part, you’ll just have to feel things out.

Ingredients

  • chicken broth (make your own by boiling a whole chicken, and you’ll have plenty of broth, as well as cooked chicken)
  • cooked chicken, diced
  • diced tomatoes, no skins (I used canned ones, myself)
  • red bell pepper, diced
  • carrot, diced
  • dried wood ear mushrooms, softened and chopped
  • bamboo shoots
  • salt
  • sugar
  • five-spice powder (optional)
  • vermicelli noodles (also known as glass noodles)
  • corn starch (or, even better, tapioca starch, since it leaves the soup clearer and prettier)
  • eggs, beaten
  • white vinegar or rice vinegar
  • hot chili sauce
  • green onion, chopped
  • cilantro, chopped
  • sesame oil

Cook the veggies in the broth, adding salt, sugar, and five-spice powder to taste.  When carrots are soft, add small pieces of vermicelli.  The easiest way to do this is to hold the dry vermicelli over the pot and use scissors to cut 1-inch-ish lengths into the soup.  Add chicken, then thicken the soup with starch.  Bring to a gentle boil and gently pour the eggs in a very thin stream into the boiling soup, using a circular motion.  Do not stir the soup while pouring the egg.  Turn off heat, cover, and let stand for half and hour.  Add vinegar and chili sauce to taste.  (This is the HOT and SOUR part of the soup, so I say be generous with both!)  Add fresh green onion and cilantro and finish with a whiff of sesame oil.  You may also add some tofu, which I love, but it doesn’t freeze well, so if you’re making a large batch, it’s probalby best to leave it out.

Ladle into bowls and add a small amount of soy sauce to each bowl, if desired.  Eat up and enjoy the praise from everyone else at the table.

Microwave popcorn

24 Sep

First off, thanks for all your encouraging comments on the last post.  Jade seems to be doing better now; she had fewer seizures yesterday and the swelling on her face is more like a marble than a golf ball.  There’s still quite a bit to update on, but I’m going to take a break from that and instead tell you about a wonderful little snack I just discovered.

Microwave popcorn might not be new to you.  We used to buy it and have it when watching movies, but stopped that habit for some reason.  Then the news came out about nasty chemicals in commercial microwave popcorn and I was really turned off.  Even though I do love popcorn!

Months ago, I read somewhere that you can pop regular kernels using a simple brown paper bag.  I tucked that bit of information away in my brain somewhere, but just thought to take it out again a couple of nights ago.  I couldn’t remember the instructions and Michael’s computer wasn’t available, so I decided to just wing it.

I threw about a quarter cup of kernels into a brown paper bag, dropped in a tablespoon of salted butter, and hit the “popcorn” button on the microwave.  Well, whaddya know, it worked!  The butter did soak through the paper bag and got the turntable a bit greasy, but gosh-darnit, the popcorn was good!

A quick Google search (after the fact!) tells me that you don’t even need to add any butter or oil, since it’s the kernels’ internal moisture that causes the pop (Right! I knew that!), which would give you healthy, low-fat “air-popped” popcorn.  I loves me some butter, though, and a little dash of salt, too.  I’ve brought some to work as a snack for the last couple of days.  Mmmmm… now I look forward to snack time even more.  And that’s saying quite a bit for a pregnant chick.

Brown Paper Bag Popcorn

  • 1 brown paper bag
  • 1/4 cup regular popping corn
  • 1 tbsp butter (optional)
  • salt or other flavourings (optional)

Pour popcorn kernels into the brown paper bag.  Throw the butter in on top, if using.

Fold the paper bag closed, making two or three folds to secure.  You can also put in a single staple; apparently, there isn’t enough metal in one to cause any arcing or fires.  Put the bag in the microwave (with a paper towel underneath, if you’re using butter).  Note: I put my bag in on its side, but some Internet sources says standing it up is better.

Hit the popcorn button on the microwave.  Stand aside and watch as the butter seeps into the bag and gets spattered everywhere inside — you might even be able to see some of the kernels bouncing around in the semi-translucent bag! Stop the microwave when there are 1 to 2 seconds between pops.  You might want to use oven mitts to take the bag out.  Open it carefully, the steam is hot!

Season as desired and enjoy.

5-Minute Chocolate Cake

31 Aug

Sunday calls for simplicity, so I want to present you with this super simple recipe for 5-Minute Chocolate Cake.  I admit that there are better chocolate cakes out there, but this one is chocolately, sweet, and a pretty darned decent dessert to whip up when a sudden chocolate craving strikes.  I traced the recipe back to Dizzy Dee’s blog, and she has photos of the process, unlike greedy me, who tried it out last week without any thought of documentation for my bloggy peeps.  Sorry, folks, I was too busy craving that chocolate.

Five-Minute Chocolate Cake

Here’s what you need:

  • 4 tablespoons cake flour
  • 4 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 tablespoons cocoa
  • 1 egg
  • 3 tablespoons milk
  • 3 tablespoons oil
  • 1 mug

Instructions:

Mix flour, sugar and cocoa. Spoon in one egg. Pour in milk and oil and mix well. Put in microwave for 3 minutes on maximum power. Wait until it stops rising and sets in the mug. Tip contents out of mug and into saucer and enjoy!

It was a total fluke that we have cake and pastry flour at our house because I never use it and can’t remember at all why we have any in the first place.  (Note that there are differences in flours between Canada and the U.S., even in flours that are identically labelled.  So this might work with all-purpose flour in Canada, I just haven’t tried.)  I think I could safely cut out a tablespoon of sugar without missing the sweetness.  I want to try this again sometime with pecans.  I don’t know if they’d just all sink to the bottom, but chocolate and pecans in a five-minute cake?  Now that could be mere inches away from Heaven.

Polenta Pleasure

18 Aug

Sometimes rice, pasta, and potatoes just start to feel constraining, yanno?  I sometimes switch things up with quinoa or couscous, but last night, inspired by the bag of cornmeal I bought recently, I decided I wanted to try polenta.

I’ve tried making polenta once or twice before, and I’ve eaten it at restaurants, but I’ve never been that impressed.  It’s always been bland, or else too dry for my taste.  But I love the texture of cornmeal and didn’t feel like making cornbread, and I figured that surely, somewhere out there must exist a tasty polenta recipe.

It took a few minutes on Google to find one that looked flavourful but was still fairly simple, meaning I had all the ingredients on hand and it wouldn’t take an hour to make.  The recipe I found came from this post at The Amateur Gourmet, who in turn borrowed it (and slightly altered it) from The Barefoot Contessa.  He forgets one of the steps (when to add the cheese), and he doesn’t start with a list of ingredients, which I found annoying.  Still, it turned out great, so I’ll reproduce it for you here.  He does have some fab photos of the process.

WARNING: This is not a low-fat recipe!  But it is oh-so-good and such a nice change of pace from your everyday starches.

  • 1/4 cup butter
  • 2-3 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • a grinding or two of red pepper flakes
  • 1 tsp (or to taste) fresh thyme or rosemary (I used dried)
  • 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
  • 1-1/2 cups chicken broth (I used bouillon satchets and water)
  • 2 cups milk
  • 1-1/4 cups cornmeal
  • flour
  • 1 tbsp butter + 1 tbsp olive oil for frying
  1. In a medium saucepan, melt butter and mix with olive oil.
  2. Add chopped garlic, herbs of choice, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes.  Cook until garlic is tender.  Normally I would use my garlic press for this, but it was all crustified, so I just made sure the garlic cooked awhile, and it didn’t cause any problems in the finished product.
  3. I added the parmesan at this point because I notice this step was missing.  In the comments of the post (which I didn’t read before I started) the Amateur Gourmet says to add it after adding the cornmeal, when you’ve taken the mixture off the heat.
  4. Add the chicken stock and milk and bring the mixture to a boil.
  5. Remove from heat to add cornmeal slowly, mixing thoroughly with a whisk to avoid lumps.
  6. Return to heat and let cook at low heat until the mixture has thickened.
  7. Pour into a 9-inch cake pan (round or square) and stick it in the fridge to cool while you start cooking up the rest of your meal, or a sauce for your polenta, if that’s how you like it.
  8. I only let my mixture rest for 5 or 10 minutes before I took it out of the fridge.  It should have firmed up a little bit by now.  Cut it into triangles or wedges.  Sprinkle some flour on top.  (I’m not sure why one is supposed to sprinkle the flour on top; I’m pretty sure you could skip this step and no one would notice…)
  9. Melt the butter and olive oil in a pan.  Fry the wedges of polenta until golden on both side.
  10. Serve with supper with pride!

You could actually skip the frying because the polenta tastes wonderful even without.  I think I’ll try making this sometime with 1/4 cup less cornmeal and serving it “wet”, almost like mashed potatoes.  We ate ours with a salmon and a fabulous asparagus recipe that I’ll have to share another time.  Mmmmm, bon apetit!

Rhubarb custard tart

1 Jul

I wrote this post up a few days ago but never published it because it never seemed like the right time.  First it was, “Hmm, I already made two posts today,” and then it was, “How can I post this on the day when we saw Nugget on the ultrasound AND Michael felt him/her kick for the first time?” and so on.  But since I haven’t actually posted in, you know, a whole day, and there’s no time to write a post tonight (lots of prep for a three-hour meeting tomorrow morning, followed by going directly to an Arts in the Park gig with The Big Band at lunch hour… how on earth am I going to manage to be everywhere I need to be on time?) well, it just seems like a good stop-gap. 

Mmmm, dreams of dessert…

 *****

Rhubarb custard tartI don’t know about where you live, but around here, the gardens are brimming with rhubarb these days. 

I think I remember the first time I ever tasted rhubarb.  I was in grade 4 and I had a wonderful teacher who always invited the class to her house for a day at the end of the year.  She had a beautiful big house with rolling lawns leading down to a creek, and she had a huge dog named Kaiser and a tiny miniature doberman called Pepper, who totally ruled the roost.  Mrs. Kozyra made rhubarb pie, and it must’ve been pretty remarkable or I wouldn’t remember it so many years later.

One of my neighbours down the street has an extremely prolific rhubarb patch.  While our rhubarb is just getting underway, his was out of control two weeks ago.  And he doesn’t even like rhubarb.  So he gave us a ton of it.  And I made a rhubarb custard tart that turned out to be so delicious, I wish there were still a few slices left.  I admit it’s not much to look at (especially because I had to strip a lot of the pretty red off the rhubarb, since it had started getting tough) but the flavour more than makes up for it.

A slice of loveliness

My neighbour Cathy had a slice and asked me for the recipe.  I haven’t got ’round to typing it out yet, so I thought while I was at it, I’d just go ahead and post it here for any rhubarb fans.  The recipe is adapted from one for “Badischer Apfelkuchen” that I have in a German cookbook.

Rhubarb Custard Tart 

Pastry:

  • 2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon butter or margarine, chilled
  • 1/3 cup sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel

Filling:

  • chopped rhubarb (I’m guessing about four cups?)
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

To make pastry, preheat oven to 400°F.  Grease a 12-inch springform pan; set aside.  In a large bowl, cut butter or margarine into flour until well distributed.  Add 1/3 cup sugar, 1 egg, and lemon peel.  Use your hands to press pastry into the bottom and about an inch and a half up the sides of the greased pan.  Don’t make the pastry too thick (you can see how mine gets pretty fat at the corners); this is not a “light, flaky” type pastry, so if it’s too thick you’ll find it hard to cut through.  It is yummy, though!

To make filling, put rhubarb into prepared pastry and distribute evenly.  In a medium bowl, beat together the 3 eggs, milk, sugar, and vanilla.  Pour over rhubarb.  Trim pastry if it comes up above the custard (or just smoosh it down if you’re lazy like me).  Bake for 25 minutes or so until custard is set.

Allow to cool before cutting.  The end.

Hmmm, I hope I remembered all that correctly.  Well, it seems to be a pretty forgiving recipe; after all, I half made it up.  This is great with coffee and a dollop of whipped cream is the perfect accompaniment. Mmmm.  I do still have some rhubarb-apple crisp in the fridge.  I think I’ll go make do with that…

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