Thursday 22 August 2013

Rhubarb Custard Pie

This is a friend's family recipe, so big thanks to her for sharing!

Short sweet pastry
2 cups of rhubarb (I used a bit more than 2 cups because of my dish)
2 eggs
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup of sugar
2 tablespoons flour

Line a backing dish with 2/3 of pastry.

Chop the rhubarb into 1-2cm pieces and put into pastry lined dish. 

Mix the eggs, melted butter, sugar and flour together and pour over rhubarb. 

Using last 1/3 roll out and lattice cut, put on top. 


(forgot to put the rhubarb in the pic, but I'm sure you know what chopped rhubarb looks like!)

Bake at 400*f (200*C) for 10min then reduce to 350*f (180*C) for 30min or until custard is set (after following the instructions and adding an extra 10 mins cooking, the custard hadn't set, so I put it back up to 200*C for another 15 mins).

ENJOY (definitely the easiest part!)

Wednesday 21 August 2013

Rhubarb & Lemon Jam

Using the leftover pulp from the Rhubarb Lemonade, I made a couple of jars of jam.  I've got my trusty Edmonds Cookbook which doesn't just give recipes, but tips as well, so I just got a rough idea of what I was supposed to do, and we'll just see how it turns out!


There was roughly 2 cups of pulp, which had already had sugar added, so I flattened out the pulp in the bottom of the pan, just covered it with water and brought it to the boil.

Then I added about 1.5 cups of sugar (technically, the recipes all showed 1:1, but I ran out of sugar and figured there was still some in the pulp).

Boiled until it looked right and put in jars.

Rhubarb Lemonade


Halved the recipe because of the size of my pan!  The full recipe is below, what I did is in itallics as usual!  I got this recipe from Allrecipes.com.

8 cups chopped rhubarb (4 cups)
3 cups sugar (1.5 cups)
3 tablespoons grated lemon peel
1.5 cups lemon juice (3/4 cup)
18 cups water (9 cups)



 
Combine the rhubarb, sugar, and grated lemon peel into a large saucepan and bring to a boil. 

Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until the sugar has dissolved and the rhubarb releases its juice and starts to break up, about 10 minutes. 

Remove from heat and stir in the lemon juice. 

Pour the rhubarb mixture through a fine sieve, pressing out as much liquid as possible. 

To serve, mix the rhubarb syrup with 18 cups of water (1 cup of syrup per 3 cups of water) and pour over ice.

I'm pretty sure I'll be using the pulp to make jam afterwards....waste not, want not! 

 

Tuesday 20 August 2013

Rhubarb & Pineapple Jelly

What to do with the possibly-last crop of rhubarb?  Preferably something I haven't done before..... internet searches, here we come!

As per usual..... the recipe is below, and what I actually did is in itallics!
I have a very good reason (this time) for halving the recipe - I did have enough rhubarb for the full recipe, but remembered in time that my pot doesn't always hold the full amount, so while I was cutting the rhubarb it became clear that 10 cups didn't have a hope in hell of fitting in!

10 cups of chopped rhubarb (5 cups)
1 can (20 oz) of crushed pineapple (undrained) (my can was 227g)
2 cups of sugar (1 cup)
1 packet (6oz) of strawberry flavoured jell-o (1 packet was 135g jelly)




Place the rhubarb, pineapple, and sugar into a large saucepan. 

Bring to a boil over medium heat; cook and stir until rhubarb is tender, about 20 minutes. 





Remove from heat, and stir in gelatin until completely blended. 







Ladle into glass jars or plastic containers to refrigerate or freeze.

I licked the spoon....I've died and gone to heaven!  These may not have time to set!!!  Self-control is necessary!

Monday 19 August 2013

Rosehip Syrup











I popped round to a friend's house today because she has Rosehips growing and I'd never seen them before.  There, I admit it, purely nosey!

rosehip berries and flower
We did a swap, rhubarb for rosehip, both very happy (and one of her girls ran round with one stalk of rhubarb as an umbrella, it was so big!).


I had a look at some recipes and decided that I would save some of the seeds and see if I could get some to grow for us, and make Rosehip Syrup with the rest.  The recipe didn't say to take the seeds out and as it's going through a jelly strainer, I didn't see the point in deseeding all of them anyway.

So the recipe, as per usual, has in itallics what actually happened.

1kg Rosehips (550g)
3 litres of boiling water (1.5 litres)
500g soft dark brown sugar (250g soft light brown sugar)

Bring to the boil 2 litres of the water (1 litre).


Put rosehips in a food processor until it's a pulp, then add to the water. WooHoo, from here I followed the instructions!

     
Bring the water back to the boil, remove from heat and allow to steep for 20 minutes.







Pour all into a scalded jelly bag and allow the juice to drip through. Squeeze the bag to get as much liquid as possible.









Add the pulp back to a saucepan containing 1 litre of water (500 ml) and bring back to the boil. Remove from the heat and steep for another 20 minutes before straining through the jelly bag again.  Not bothering to take these photos..... I'm sure you don't need to see the same pics again (but if you do, just look up a bit!)

Add sugar to the strained rosehip liquid, dissolve, allow to simmer for five minutes, then pour into hot, sterilised bottles.

Makes approximately 2 litres (made 1.4 litres)

Friday 16 August 2013

Seeds

Just put in a huge order for next years seeds.  Got some really unusual ones too!  Until they arrive, that is all!