Petah's Rhubarb Crisp

Rhubarb Crisp - Dutch Oven Detour (recipes that should have been in the Dutch Oven)

There aren't nearly enough rhubarb recipes in The Dutch Oven Cookbook - and absolutely no crisp recipes. Surprising for an eastcost cookbook. Yesterday we got our first haul of rhubarb of the season. Beautiful ruby red rhubarb - we just couldn't risist using it to bake something up today. We settled on rhubarb crisp - tart rubarb works perfectly with the sweet, crisp struesel like topping of a crisp. Peter, somewhat of rhubarb addict, created this simple and quick recipe. Perhaps something to be including in a Dutch Oven Cookbook follow-up - "the lost recipes"? Definitely, maybe!?

Petah's Rhubarb Crisp
4 cups chopped rhubarb (3/4 inch thick, cut crosswise)
2 Tbsp flour
1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter (chilled, cut into pieces)
1/2 cup flour
1 cup oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Combine first three ingredients in an 8.5 x 11 baking dish. Blend butter and flour together using a pastry cutter until small pieces form. Add remaining ingredients and work mixture together using your hands until large clumps form. Sprinkle mixture evenly over top of rhubarb mixture. Bake at 400 degrees for 40 mintues until topping is lightly browned and rhubarb is tender. Serve with vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.

Punch it up a Notch!

Rhubarb Punch – Beverages & Canapés, Pg. 33 – May Eisenhauer (Mrs. D. M.)


Who knew that rhubarb could be such a versatile vegetable? We can now add drinks to our ever-growing list of recipe uses for rhubarb.

Punch, a beverage originated in India (pronounced “panch”) – tomata/tomato – potata/potato, came to us in the early seventeenth century from England. Punch is normally made with a fruit juice – not sure who takes credit with coming up with the idea to use rhubarb (a vegetable) – but we’ll pretend it was a Nova Scotian (a rhubarb lovin’ German settler perhaps). The German’s were apparently really into their punch as well. Pronounced “punsch”, the German version often added wine or liquor to the recipe – definitely seeing the Nova Scotia connection here…

Summer has made a late entrance this year in our end of the world – but with the sun shinin' and the temperature risin', it’s the perfect time to prepare this cool and refreshing, sweet and tart summer drink. If you’re lucky, you can still pick up some fresh rhubarb from your local farmers’ market (we spotted some last week at the Halifax Seaport Market), otherwise frozen will work just fine.

Ingredients:

1 quart chopped rhubarb (4 cups)
1 quart water
1/3 cup orange juice
4 Tbsp lemon juice
1 ½ cups sugar syrup (equal parts sugar and water – dissolve sugar in boiling water)
Few grains of salt
1 pint (2 cups) mineral water (or ginger ale)

Instructions:

Cut rhubarb into small pieces and cook in 1 quart of water until rhubarb is soft. Strain liquid through cheesecloth (if you’re fresh out of cheesecloth, a strainer will work just fine). Discard rhubarb. Add orange juice, lemon juice, sugar syrup and salt to rhubarb juice. When ready to serve – pour over ice in punch bowl and add mineral water of ginger ale. Allow to get very cold. Makes 8 regular glasses, or 24 punch glasses.

Dutch Oven Tips & Tricks:

This recipe was pretty straight forward to prepare, no big surprises. We reduced the recipe to half as we didn’t want a large amount and this worked just fine. This recipe is delicious as is, however if you want to really get the party started you could punch it up a notch, German style, by using sparkling wine instead of mineral water or ginger ale. Check out Wines of Nova Scotia for some great local options.

Beebop-a-reebop Rhubarb Pie!

Rhubarb Custard Pie – Pies & Pastries, Pg. 200 – Jean C. Rafuse (Mrs. E. W.)



Anyone else get that little song stuck in their head whenever you’re cooking with rhubarb? Mama’s little baby loves rhubarb rhubarb – bebop-a-reebop rhubarb pie! Yeah-No? Probably just Peter…

One of the first veggies of the harvest season in Nova Scotia is Rhubarb! We’re all over this celery-like tart vegetable. We recently loaded up during a trip to the Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market and began our rendezvous with rhubarb. Top of our to-do list - rhubarb pie!

We had lots of rhubarb so we decided to double-double our rhubarb pleasure and double-double your delightment by preparing two different rhubarb pie recipes. The Dutch Oven’s Rhubarb Custard Pie will be the focus of this post. The second, from our favorite go-to cookbook – America’s test kitchen’s Rhubarb Custard Pie coming soon…

The first step to making a perfect pie is choosing the pie crust – the foundation to any great pie! Check out our Easy as Pie post for a couple of excellent suggestions. For this particular pie we used Julia Child’s Classic Pie Dough recipe. You’ll need to blind bake your pie crust for this one…and we don’t mean bake your pie crust while blind-folded – Yikes! – no need for third degree burns and a visit to the emergency room. Blind baking is the process of pre-baking your pie crust – a common process for custard or cream pies to ensure a flaky and golden pie crust. After placing the dough in the pie dish, cover with a double layer of foil (ensuring the crust is completely covered to avoid over-browning). Pie weights or pennies are then placed in the middle of the crust to ensure the bottom of the crust doesn’t bubble and weaken. Bake at 375 degrees for 35-40 mins.

Despite a few reservations during the preparation of this recipe, it was delicious. The ruby-red rhubarb custard filling was perfectly tart - combined with the sweetness of the mile-high meringue topping made this pie a blue ribbon winner for sure!

Ingredients:

2 cups choppe
d rhubarb (we added an extra cup)
3 eggs (separated)
1 cup sugar
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp cornstarch

Instructions:

Combine sugar and cornstarch and mix with chopped rhubarb. Cook mixture in a double boiler until creamy. Add butter, mix. In a bowl lightly beat egg yolks and slowly add rhubarb mixture to beaten egg yolks. Return mixture to double boiler and continue to cook until thickened. Pour into prepared pie shell. Using the egg whites prepare a meringue.











No recipe was provided for the meringue, so we used this one from America’s Test Kitchen’s Family Cookbook. A little fussy, but delicious and worth the extra effort. If you’re not overachievers like we are, just whip your egg whites with some sugar and have at it.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup water
1 tbsp cornstarch
4 egg whites
½ tsp vanilla
½ cup sugar
¼ tsp cream of tarter

Instructions:

Bring the water and the cornstarch to a simmer in a small saucepan over medium-high heat, whisking frequently. When the liquid turns translucent and begins to bubble, remove it from the heat (ours got really thick).

Whip the egg whites and vanilla in an electric mixer on low speed until frothy. Mix the sugar and cream of tartar together, then add it to the egg whites, 1 tbsp at a time. Increase the speed to medium and whip the egg whites until soft peaks form. Add the cornstarch mixture to the whipped egg whites, 1 tbsp at a time, and continue to whip until the egg whites are glossy and form stiff peaks.

Drop dabs of meringue evenly around the edge of the pie and spread around the centre. Use the back of a spoon to create attractive peaks in the meringue. Return the pie to the oven until meringue is golden.



Dutch Oven Tips & Tricks:

While not everything made sense to us in this recipe…it worked. We weren’t convinced that a double boiler is necessary. The same results should be able to be achieved using a regular pot directly on the stove top. This recipe is a little light on the rhubarb, using a standard 9 inch pie pan, we used 3 cups instead of the recommended 2, and still found it a little light on the filling.





If you like rhubarb (or even if you don’t – Jan thought she didn’t like rhubarb until she had this pie) – get your bebop on and fix yourself a rhubarb pie!

Mama's Little Rhubarb

Rhubarb Relish – Pickles and Preserves – pg. 318, Josephine Eisenhauer (Mrs. D. A.)

Wow – our first official Dutch Oven Cookbook recipe blog! What better way than to start with the recipe that started it all – Rhubarb Relish!

We’ve been hitting Magnolias Grill for years . Magnolia's Grill is a small café located in old town Lunenburg. The tiny café is littered with kitschy salt and pepper shakers and the walls are decorated with pictures of celeb friends that have dined at the café over the years – Candice Bergen, Kathy Bates (café owner Nancy Lohnes played her body double in Stephen King's Dolores Claiborne - in which Peter also played a doorman!), and of course the restaurant’s most regular celeb visitor – Tom Selleck!

Magnolias serves the undisputed, handsdown, best fish cakes evah! Some would argue that “real” fishcakes are made with salt cod, but Mags’ (as the locals affectionally call it) are made with haddock, and we don’t mind telling you that these fish cakes own! Fresh flaky haddock is combined with mashed spuds, onions and who knows what else, then pan fried to a golden brown! Brown food is good food as Chef Anne Burrell would say (Food Network’s – Secret’s of a Restaurant Chef host). It doesn’t end their of course, Mags has a secret weapon – Rhubarb Relish! If you’re not from the South Shore, you’re probably thinking – Rhubarb? – Relish? - Wha? Oh yeah, you read it correctly – fishcakes aren’t fishcakes without Rhubarb Relish. Its sweet and tangy flavor is the perfect compliment to any type of white fish based dish. If you plan on hitting the café, try to avoid peak dinner hours – lineups are often out the door. Oh…and the fresh squeezed lemonade is killer!

After years of eating fishcakes and rhubarb relish at Magnolia’s Grill, the time had come to attempt to duplicate this delicious delight. After researching recipes a bit, we felt that the Dutch Oven recipe seemed to be a good bet. Thankfully Peter’s Mama’s (Diane) rhubarb patch was prime for the picking, and given Diane’s experience with preserve making – she graciously offered to mentor us through our first preserve endeavor. Thus the title of this blog “Mama’s little rhubarb” – not sure if “little rhubarb” refers to Peter or the rhubarb patch.

What we had feared would be a fairly daunting task – chopping, boiling, bottling – turned out to be fairly simple. It contains few ingredients – Rhubarb, onions (these should be sliced by the way, the recipe doesn’t specify), cider vinegar, sugar (careful – it looks like 1 cup in the recipe, but it is really a 7 – Peter’s brother found this out the hard way), a few spices – and that’s it. The most daunting part of this recipe would be chopping the two quarts each of rhubarb and onions, however thanks to modern technology - a food processor makes the perfect sous chef.

If you’ve got a big pot, a food processor and some jars – you can do this! You’ll notice in some of the pictures that we used a unique pot in our preparation – this pot is known as a maslin pan – traditionally used in the UK for making preserves. Its designed with a wide mouth that narrows towards the base, fitting perfectly on the stove burner. The maslin pan has a heavy stainless steel bottom as well as a swinging handle (like a bucket) to easily lift and pour the preserves into jars. Jan acquired the pan a few years back with grand pickling and preserving plans :) Although any old pot with a solid bottom will do the trick, if you are hard core into pickling and preserves, you may want to consider adding one of these pots to your collection. You can purchase them at Lee Valley Hardware.

Rhubarb Relish:

Ingredients:

2 quarts (8 cups) chopped rhubarb
2 quarts (8 cups) sliced onions
7 cups white sugar
3 cups cider vinegar (or white)
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
2 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp cinnamon

Instructions:

Scald sliced onions in boiling water for a few minutes, discard water. Combine all ingredients. Bring to hard boil. Reduce head and low boil for an 1 hr 30 minutes. Fill sterilized jars and process.

Dutch Oven Tips & Tricks:

We did have a few challenges and questions with the recipe - so here they are. The recipe called to scald your onions – we weren’t certain how to go about this but Peter’s Mom suggested boiling some water and pouring it over the sliced onions, we imagine you could also just put the onions in water and bring it to a boil. After scalding the onions for a few minutes, discard the water. The purpose we assume is to remove some of the potent onion flavor. Speaking of onions – this recipe has a lot – two quarts worth. We recommend you definitely use a food processor and a pair of Paula Deen style onion goggles couldn’t hurt. The recipe instructions say to cook all the ingredients thoroughly until thick – WHA?? The lack of instruction here left us in a bit of a pickle (no pun intended). I’m certain Mrs. Eiasenhauer (the recipe’s author) knows exactly how long to cook this – we did try to reach Mrs. Eisenhauer, unfortunately she wasn’t at home. It’s a fine line – rhubarb relish shouldn’t be thick like jam, so we didn’t want to overcook it. Also, once the relish cools it tends to thicken more. We ended up letting the relish simmer for about 1 hour 30 minutes until we were happy with its consistency. The recipe yields about eight 500 ml jars (the recipe doesn’t specify this).

Although this recipe isn’t an exact replica of the rhubarb relish they serve at Magnolia’s Grill, it is an excellent second. We will continue our efforts to duplicate their recipe. Overall the recipe was surprisingly simple and delicious – a definite redo.