Rhubarb Catch-Up

Summer has been so slow to get going, it seems the only thing growing out in the back yard is rhubarb.  Strangely, it's doing so well we can hardly use it all.  So to catch up, we made ketchup.

Rhubarb ketchup is a thing of great beauty.  It looks good, it tastes good, and it's a great way to use the big old fibrous stalks that you left too long to reasonably use in a pie...

Hot and Sour Rhubarb Ketchup

loosely adapted from Marguerite Patten's ketchup recipes

1-1/2 lb chopped rhubarb stalks
2 sweet white onions, diced
2 c water
1/2 c raw cane sugar + more to taste
3 cloves garlic, crushed
3 thai chili peppers, stemmed and split
1 tbsp fish sauce
2 c spiced vinegar (see below)

Combine the rhubarb, onion, water, sugar, garlic and hot peppers in a large sauce pan.  Bring to a boil.  Stir well to make sure all the sugar is dissolved, then turn down and simmer until the rhubarb and onions are soft.   

Puree the mixture with an immersion blender (or in batches in a regular blender, or run it through a food mill) and return to the stove.  Simmer until reduced to thick sauce.  

Stir in the fish sauce and spiced vinegar.  Taste it; add more sugar if needed or otherwise adjust your seasoning.  Simmer until desired ketchup-thickness.

Transfer to a clean jar or bottle and store in the refrigerator.   Alternatively, you can fill sterile jars with hot ketchup and heat process for 10 minutes, saving the fridge space.

Don't have cheesecloth around to tie those spices up in? Don't
worry.  Infuse the vinegar then strain them out.

Spiced Vinegar

2 c white vinegar (5% acetic acid)
1 tsp fennel seed
1 tsp whole cloves
1 tsp broken-up star anise
1 cinnamon stick

Put everything in a saucepan with a lid.  Heat over medium until it comes to a boil then remove from heat.  Leave, covered, for at least 2 hours to infuse the vinegar.  Strain through a sieve when you are ready to use.

~~~

Marguerite Patten died recently, at the age of 99.  I can't help but figure she had something right about cooking and eating to have made that far.  

I didn't know anything about Patten before I met Fefe Noir and her ever-increasing collection of old British cookbooks.  What we have of Patten's (handed down from her mother and carefully protected in resealable bags so that the loose pages don't get lost) only scratches the surface of her bibliography, but they are well used -- as much for technique and inspiration as for actual recipes.  If nothing else, I owe her a great debt of gratitude for giving me permission to make ketchup out of things that aren't tomatoes.*

*I grew up in Heinz country.  Literally in the midst of tomato fields that fed the local factory which produced ketchup from 1910 until it closed in 2014.  I was reared on Heinz ketchup** so the idea that ketchup is made, always, from tomatoes was just woven into me.

**Well, okay, if we bought ketchup, it was Heinz, but mom did make her own ketchup.  From tomatoes.

This is what I love about Marguerite Patten: she is full of solutions.  I tore the kitchen apart looking for cheesecloth to tie all my spices in a bundle for simmering with the rhubarb.  As I was puzzling how I was going to get my spice mix infused through the ketchup I happen to notice that some of Patten's recipes used spiced vinegar, not a spice sachet.  Whoa-ho, then!  What a fantastic solution.  Infuse the vinegar and stir it in later.  Brilliant.

There is no recipe in her book for rhubarb ketchup, and certainly no recipe with thai chilies and star anise.  But she is very reliable about the proportions of fruit to sugar to vinegar.  So when we found ourselves with a glut of rhubarb (the opposite problem to what we faced a couple years ago), the obvious plan of attack was to pull the 500 Recipes: Jams, Pickles, Chutneys off the shelf.

~~~

Hot and sour rhubarb ketchup is fancy, but it's not snobby.  Served here with  grilled cheese made with sprouted grain sourdough bread from Rocket Bakery and smoked cheddar cheese from Five Brothers Artisan Cheese purchased at Admiral's Market.  Er, okay, maybe a little bit snobby...

Oh and by the way, you really want to make this ketchup.  Working on the recipe I knew we hit it when, tasting a batch, I immediately thought, "this would go really well with cava!".  Which means it would go really well with champagne... and there's your excuse to have champagne with your french fries.  The good news is that although you can serve it to your snobby friends, it's not really a snobby ketchup: also goes well with burgers and beer.   

Five Things to do with Chive Flowers

Having been over-run with chives earlier in the year, we are now over-run with chive flowers.  It's a good problem to have, so much so it isn't really a problem: for starters, the flowers are awful pretty, so they make us happy whether we use them or not.  But even better, they are edible and we like eating flowers.  Admittedly, there is a myriad of ways to use the flowers, but here are our five favourites. 

Any suggestions?  Fefe says she is tired of chive flowers, but caribougrrl is still looking for more ways to eat them.  Leave us a comment!

ONE:  Chive Flower Mayonnaise

The thing that makes chive flower mayonnaise is that although you make mayonnaise as usual, you add chive flowers to it.  Sometimes simple ideas are the best.

2 egg yolks

3 chive flower heads

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp hot mustard powder

2 tsp white wine vinegar

1 c. sunflower oil

Take the eggs out of the fridge well before making the mayo; you want the yolks to be room temperature or slightly warmer.  Choose big full chive flowers, rinse them off, and get rid of any bugs or debris in them.  Once dry (go ahead and help this along by rolling gently in a clean tea towel), pull the individual flowers out of the head.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together egg yolks, chive flowers, salt, mustard and vinegar until combined and smooth.  The next part, the bit that really makes the mayonnaise, is tedious and boring but very simple... unless you lack patience or stamina, you can't really go wrong.  You will find lots of advice for ways to make mayonnaise with a blender or food processor, but in my experience you will get your best results by hand whisk.  As an added bonus, painstakingly hand-whisking oil and eggs into mayo gives you the opportunity to experience a small miracle and really puts you in touch with food production in a personal way.  This is a highly satisfying job.  

Right then, ready?  Add oil a drop or two at a time, whisking until fully incorporated (no liquidy oil spots visible).  Keep adding a drop or two at a time until it emulsifies quickly and easily.  Take a moment to stretch out your hand and forearm, and start adding the oil in a slow thin stream, whisking constantly.  If you start to see a slick of oil on the mixture, stop adding oil and whisk until incorporated.  Take occasional breaks as needed to rest or stretch your arm.  Or rope someone else into helping.  Keep adding oil slowly until you get the desired thickness.  This is not aioli, don't make it runny.  If you come to the end of the cup of oil and it's too thin, add more oil.

Transfer to a clean jar and store in the refrigerator.  This will keep only a couple of weeks, so use it!  

Variation -  Fermented Chive Flower Mayonnaise:  If you want to make a mayo that lasts for months rather than weeks, add some whey and lacto-ferment it.  I find it pretty successful taste-wise; the texture is not quite as nice, but the trade-off is preservation.  That means you can make a double or triple batch after making an angel food cake or meringues to use up the yolks, even if you don't have immediate plans for the mayo.  Here's what you do:  drain some yogurt with active bacteria in it to get the whey (the liquid that drains off).  Add 3 tbsp of whey to the recipe (1-1/2 tbsp per egg yolk) and reduce the vinegar to 1 tsp.  Mix the whey in with the other ingredients before adding the oil.  The mixture will take more than a cup of oil with the additional liquid, so just keep adding until it feels right.  Transfer to a clean jar with a lid, store at room temperature in a dark place (like a cupboard) for 7-12 hours.  I know, it's counter-intuitive to leave mayo at room temperature, but that's what you do; this is when the good probiotic bacteria culture the mayo and increase the shelf-life. You need to let them do their growing magic so they can prevent the growth of dangerous bacteria.  

Among other uses, chive flower mayonnaise is a great dressing for summer potato salad and an excellent topping for cod and crab burgers.

TWO and THREE:  Chive Flower Vinegar and Quick-pickled Chive Flowers

Make Wholesome Ireland's Chive Flower Vinegar.  Infusing white vinegar with chive flowers turns it a fantastic shade of pinky-purple, gives the vinegar a subtle but undeniably present onion-y chive-y flavour.  The vinegar adds some charm to your salad dressings and I suspect is delightful on fish & chips.  As a bonus:  Follow the full instructions and when you strain the vinegar, reserve the quick-pickled chive flowers and eat them too.  Fefe Noir says that, sprinkled with salt, the pickled chive flowers are just like strong pickled onions: perfect with a punchy cheese.

FOUR:   Chive Flower Pizza Dough

Use the recipe for dandelion flower pizza dough, substituting pulled-apart chive flower for the dandelion fluff. The chive flowers are less subtle so you might want to reduce the volume (or not, they're very tasty) or use whole grain flour (or not and keep the chive flowers highly visible).  What more can we say?  Makes a really good pizza crust. 

FIVE:  Chive Flower Felafel

Add chive flowers and chives (or substitute for part or all of the parsley) in your favourite felafel recipe.  Mmmmm...