Let me show you a really simple and reliable way to prep and cook rhubarb.
I think rhubarb is one of the highlights of the year, it is so tasty.
It's just so juicy and delicious and tangy and gorgeous, and we often use it as a fruit
but actually it's a vegetable, okay?
So I'm going to show you how to prep it, how to cook it, I want to just slice it up about
a centimetre thick.
This is the rock chopping method - so rock chopping is very very simple okay, you just
do that, same time every single time, and you move it down the vegetable or whatever
it is that you're cutting.
So let's just do it one more time and I'll show you, you can cut it in half and double
it up.
You can see my thumb is placed back here, see the thumb right?
And you can see that I'm just doing this chopping, rock chopping, and I'm bringing my fingers
towards my thumb.
On the rhubarb if you've got any leaves, simply remove them.
You can't eat the leaves of rhubarb.
You need for this a nice big pan.
Get it on fairly high heat.
300 grams is a nice amount of sugar for two kilos of rhubarb.
If it is more acidic, you just add 50 grams more sugar and go with the flow.
I'm not gonna add any water at all, there's enough water in here.
One thing I do love to do myself, I just have a little bit of thyme that I put in there,
you don't have to.
Put it in as a whole bunch, I'll take it out later, it's just going to kind of give a little
bit of a nice kind of savoriness.
I tend to just take a thumb-sized piece of ginger - what I like to do is take these bits
of skin, put those with boiling water and a little bit of lemon skin right, delicious
little you know, therapeutic teas.
Or if you're cooking some rice you know, just one cup of rice to two cups of water, pinch
of salt, and some of those little skins, and it will just infuse a lovely flavor into your
simple rice very delicious.
I like just to grate it on a fine grater like this.
Basically it's like a teaspoon of ginger that goes in.
And that is my basic kind of mothership rhubarb recipe.
Let's give it a nice little stir up, you'll see the natural water starting to come out
of the rhubarb.
The smell will be phenomenal, this will fill the house with the most amazing smells.
So give it a nice little stir, bring this to the boil, turn it down to a little simmer
cook it for about 10 to 12 minutes, that will give you perfectly cooked rhubarb and a kind
of cordial.
Now if you want you can separate those and have a bottle of cordial and beautifully cooked
rhubarb and do what you want with it, that cordial, ice, lemon juice, water, delicious
little drink.
Or, you can continue to cook it for about 20 minutes and you'll have a lovely thick
compote.
Now, I'll let that cook and then I want to give you lots of ideas of how could you use
that.
Not just crumbles, not just pies, let's think sweet savory breakfast brunch lunch dinner!
Right, cook away...
Okay so I've turned the heat off now, I gave it about 15 minutes.
And what you can do is remove the herb.
So let's just talk about how do we serve it?
Of course you could put that into a lovely pie, you could serve it you know on lovely
overnight oats like this, gorgeous.
So that will keep in the fridge at least for a couple of weeks, happy days you can bag
it up freeze it if you want.
But let's talk about savory first.
If you were to take things like salami, prosciutto, ham... this is some bresaola which is a cured
topside of beef, right?
And then to go with that we'll take a little bit of this beautiful poached rhubarb, you
know have it with some nice peppery rocket like that, and just finish it with a little
squeeze of lemon juice and some olive oil, and a little bit of parmesan, and a touch
of pepper.
We can also go into the world of cocktails.
What we can do is go slightly more bellini-like and get just that lovely kind of cordial over
to your glass, and then simply top it up with champagne.
If you want this delicious recipe then come over and see us on the JUM app.
Cheers.