The Funky Kitchen

If you’re around my part of the world, and you have a rhubarb plant, you’ve probably got a whole lot of rhubarb to put to use.  Having already made a pie, and there having been a rhubarb crisp in the house, it’s always good to have something new to help use up the rhubarb crop. What’s a lovely, summery way to use up rhubarb? Rhubarb schnapps.

Two of my favorite ladies and I hung out one evening and put this sweet-tart concoction together, a few days later they got to enjoy it. I, regretfully, missed out on the fun, though it’s all right because I made this schnapps last year too!

Here’s how you do it:

Rhubarb Schnapps

(adapted from Rhubarb Schnapps in Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess)

2 lbs rhubarb

1 1/2 Cups sugar

1 Litre vodka

• Thinly slice the rhubarb. The thinner you slice it, the sooner the schnapps will be ready (the rhubarb flavor will enter the vodka faster due to more surface area contact between the ingredients). Look at Cara’s lovely knife skills (she’s a chef!).

• Combine the rhubarb and the sugar in a bowl together and give it some time to macerate.

• Place in a clean, sealable jar (or if you do not have a jar large enough to hold everything, evenly divide between smaller jars) and pour over the vodka.
• Seal and shake.

• Allow to steep until the liquid is adorably pink and fragrantly rhubarb like. With our rhubarb sliced quite thinly, the schnapps steeped in a matter of days. In Nigella’s original recipe, she suggests 6 weeks of steeping time, but you can see in the book that her rhubarb is very roughly chopped.

• Open up the jars, and strain out the rhubarb. What is left is your schnapps! Enjoy!

When it’s all done, you can drink it straight from the shot glass. I personally like it in sprite with some lemon squeezed in for extra tanginess. Cara and Ashley, my lovely ladies made cocktails. They took pictures for me so we could include the cocktail, but I wasn’t told what the cocktails were made out of. I’ll update you all with that as soon as I am informed!

Before the Mister came along, my approach to pie was simple. All I ever really put thought into was, “What kind of yummy stuff can I fill this with?” The crust was just the wrapper around the good part.

As it turns out, the crust matters too. Mister comes from a family with two generations of prize winning pie bakers and the trick, I’m told, is all in the pie crust. I was ignoring a vital part of pie baking. Bad me!

The Mister, in the beginning of our relationship, waxed poetic about the pies his mum could bake. This, of course, is where I heard about the multigenerational prize winners, and… the secret pie crust recipe. The Mister told me all of this because he already knew about my penchant for baking and was connecting to it, not in attempt to daunt me with how amazing of a person I was going to have to live up to (and Heather, you are amazing). Being myself, though, I was daunted with all of this.  I never really put much thought into pie crust, are he going to think I was silly for that? Was I ever going to be able to live up to these prize winning expectations?

Of course, all of my worrying was unfounded, as per usual. He liked the things I baked for him, as did his family. Still, the secret recipe loomed. What was so special and secret about it? Was I ever going to find out what the secret was?

The Mister brought it up at some point, “Maybe Dana can learn the secret pie crust recipe one day, so she can bake us pies.”

And Heather said, “Secret? That recipe isn’t a secret!” She got out her book of recipes, flipped to the page and enlightened me as to the prize winning excellency that is her pie crust.  Heather has given me permission to share the not so secret with you! Use it wisely. A pie is a beautiful thing.

Prize Winning Pie Crust

(from Aunt Phyllis’s Never-Fail Pie Crust)

5 Cups flour

2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 Tbsp brown sugar

1 egg

1 Tbsp vinegar

ice cold water

1 pound of lard, shortening or butter

• Combine the flour, salt, baking powder and brown sugar so that they are evenly distributed throughout the whole mixture.
• In a 3/4 C measure, combine beaten egg and vinegar. Add ice cold water until the measure is full.
• Cut the fat you chose to work with into the dry mixture until crumby.
• Mixing with a fork, pour in liquid mixture gradually until dough forms.
• When all of the flour is combined, cut the ball of dough into 6 pieces. This will be enough for 6 pie crusts, or 3 pies that have both a top and bottom crust.

The recipe leaves you with a lot of crust, do you really want to make 3 to 6 pies? You surely could, but you could also store what you don’t yet want to use in the fridge or freezer. Wrap it up with cling film or put it in a container with a lid, you don’t want it to lose it’s moisture.

I know that this post is all about the pie crust, but what yummy things did I pour into it? Rhubarb and sugar and cream. This rhubarb cream pie gets two thumbs up!

Rhubarb Cream Pie

(adapted from Spring 2010 Dish Magazine)

Pastry for one, bottom only pie

1 Cup sugar

1/3 Cup flour

1/3 Cup cream

1/4 tsp salt

4 Cups finely chopped rhubarb

• Turn the oven dial to 350 ° F.
• Roll out pie crust and line a 10 inch pie plate with it.
• Mix sugar, flour, cream and salt together in a large bowl.
• Then, mix in the rhubarb.
• Tumble into pie crust and place in the oven. Bake until the crust is golden brown and the filling is just set (~70 minutes).
• Serve warm with ice cream! Share with friends!

If we played a little bit of word association and I said tomato soup, what would you think of?

Campbell’s? Gazpacho? Grilled cheese? Velvety goodness?

Julie Albert and Lisa Gnat‘s tomato soup, from their cookbook Bite Me is full of velvety goodness, as well as a whole lot of tasty vegetables. And, even better, it is topped with grilled cheese croutons! This is just one of the fabulous recipes from their book, which happens to be one of the most unabashedly fun cookbooks I have seen in a long time. It is seriously worth a look.

When I think of tomato soup, I hope for it to be everything that this tomato soup is: flavorful, intense and smooth. Roasting the tomatoes brings out so much more of their flavor. And then, in a twist of the classical pairing of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, the sandwich gets cut up into little croutons and sprinkled over the soup.

What an awesome, healthful dinner.  With a little dollop of sour cream as the cherry on the sundae, this soup is a pretty serious reminder that with a little bit of effort, what you can make on your own can often be so much better than what you can buy at the store.

Roasted Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese Croutons

(adapted from Julie Albert and Lisa Gnat’s Bite Me, Tomato Soup with Grilled Cheese Croutons)

2 – 795 mL cans whole tomatoes

4 Tbsp olive oil

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1/2 tsp fresh cracked pepper

1 small yellow onion (or half of a large one, like I used), diced

12 baby carrots (original recipe calls for 2 medium carrots), diced

2 celery stalks, diced

1 clove of garlic, minced

2 Tbsp flour

2 Cups water

1 bay leaf

2 tsp brown sugar

2 Tbsp basil

4 slices of bread

2 Tbsp butter

cheddar cheese (depending on how much cheese you like in a grilled cheese sandwich)

• Set the oven to 425° F, and allow to come to temperature.
• Strain the tomatoes, giving each a good squeeze to release the juice inside. Reserve the juices from the tomatoes.
• Place the dried tomatoes in a oven safe dish, drizzle with half to the olive oil and season with half each of the pepper and kosher salt.
• Roast the tomatoes in the preheated oven for 15 minutes.
• Meanwhile, in a soup pot, saute the onion, carrots, celery and garlic in the olive oil until softened and beginning to take on color.
• Add the flour to the pot, stirring to coat the vegetables and cook the flour through evenly.
• To the pot, add: the roasted tomatoes, tomato juices, water, bay leaf, brown sugar (it will help to calm the acidity of the tomatoes), and remaining pepper and salt.
• Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and allow to cook for half an hour, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking.
• Discard bay leaf and puree until smooth and velvety. Stir in basil.
• Using the bread, butter and cheddar cheese make two grilled cheese sandwiches. When done, place them on a cutting board and chop them into 1×1 inch pieces.
• Ladle hot, hearty, scrumptious soup into bowls, and top with grilled cheese croutons.
• Enjoy!

I left the grilled cheese sandwiches in the pan a little bit longer than I normally would, figuring that the extra crispness would help them stand up to being partially immersed in soup. Taking into account my aversion to toast, though, they were probably grilled to a pretty normal degree. I’d like, next time, to figure out a way to get the grilled cheese croutons to have more crouton crunchiness. Any suggestions? Maybe I should bake them in the oven…

What is that shiny new piece of kitchen hardware in the pictures you ask? That is my lovely new Peasant Chef’s Knife from Lee Valley. It is so nicely balanced, and isn’t too heavy. It fits my hand just right. Thanks again Mister, you sure know how to tug at a girl’s heart strings.