Rhubarb

One of the reasons I love rhubarb is because it's the earliest fruit we can pick in the garden, especially up here. At the weekend there were some lovely big stalks on the rhubarb in pots I brought from the last garden and in the patch in this garden. 

One of four pots of rhubarb from our last garden

One of the varieties from the last garden is 'Victoria', the others I don't know. One is the original rhubarb still growing in the garden when we moved there 15 years ago, a left over from the old house garden, so I suspect it's very old. 

Lovely pink and red stalks ready for washing and cooking

Picked with the leaves and ends cut off into the compost heap

Once in the house I washed it and trimmed up the ends, it was then cut into inch long bits and placed in a pan with a little water and some sugar and gently cooked until soft. You can always add more sugar if it's not sweet enough.

Cooked and smelling good

After consultation with David and Daniel I was asked to make a crumble and a pie, as long as they are with custard, I don't mind! Half the rhubarb went into a dish and topped with a simple crumble mix of 110g butter, 110g demerara sugar and 180g of plain flour made in the food processor. I pressed this ontop of the rhubarb, wrapped it and it's in the freezer to use at some point.

Rhubarb crumble

The rest of the rhubarb was placed in a pie dish lined with shortcrust pastry, this was topped with more pastry, trimmed, decorated and a wash of egg over the top. The pie is in the fridge to be cooked for dinner tomorrow, with custard of course.

Making the rhubarb pie

The custard was bought at discount from Approved foods and the pastry was also a reduced yellow label from a couple of weeks ago and retrieved from the freezer. So two very cheap desserts, both will feed four of us easily for two meals. Excellent.

Rhubarb pie ready for cooking