Family Chow Hall

Fresh Rhubarb Crisp

How do you make five kids extremely happy? By transporting rhubarb from their home state to the southern state they live in and making a surprise rhubarb crisp for them after a weekend away.

Sounds a little weird, doesn’t it? I think so, too. Surprisingly, one of the things my kids miss the most about living up north is rhubarb. It simply cannot be grown in the southern states. The plant requires 2 - 3 months of constant cold temperatures in order to thrive and we don’t have the right weather for it. Consequently, we can’t buy it in the stores, either. It’s funny, the things you take for granted and then suddenly miss soooo… much.

For you southerners, rhubarb - the part you eat - is a bright red and green stalk that appears something like celery. It is very tart, but delicious when baked up with sugar in a pie, crisp, or cake. The leaves of the rhubarb plant are very large and they are poisonous. It crops up in the springtime and you just break the stalk off near the ground and chop the leaf off of the top. To prepare, you usually dice it before putting in the pie, cake, or crisp. If you live in the south, keep your eyes out for rhubarb in the freezer section of your grocery.

To learn more about rhubarb and see a nice photo, click here.

Last weekend, I flew north for my nephew’s wedding, (Way to go, Curt!) and brought 20 cups of chopped rhubarb, compliments of my dear mother, home in a cooler in my suitcase. 2 hours after returning home, I had steaming fresh rhubarb crisp cooling on my countertop. I got this recipe out of our family cookbook, submitted by my cousin Wanda. Check it out below:

Fresh Rhubarb Crisp
makes one 11 x 7 pan, which will last about 5 minutes if your kids haven’t had rhubarb for several years

1 c. brown sugar
1 c. flour
3/4 c. oats
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 c. butter or margarine
4 c. chopped rhubarb
2 T. cornstarch
1 c. sugar
1 c. water
1 t. vanilla

In a large bowl, using a pastry blender, combine the flour, brown sugar, oats, cinnamon, and butter until it looks crumbly. Use half of this to form a bottom crust in a greased 7 x 11 pan. Set the other half of your crumb mixture aside.

Next, lay the chopped rhubarb on top of this crust. In a sauce pan, combine the cornstarch and white sugar. Add the water and vanilla and heat to a boil over medium heat. Cook and stir constantly until it is thick and clear. Now pour this sticky mixture over the rhubarb.

Finally, sprinkle the remaining crumb mixture over the gooey rhubarb. Pop it into the oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or so.

Rhubarb crisp is best served warm with vanilla ice cream on top. Enjoy!

Add comment February 23rd, 2010

In honor of the rodeo…

In honor of the upcoming Houston livestock show and rodeo, I will be cooking up a few recipes from this book in the next couple of weeks:

The Texas Cowboy Cookbook

… which I borrowed from our local library recently. It’s so interesting and full of fascinating recipes, I might just buy myself a copy.

First up for tonight, Jalapeno Corn Bread, which will go nicely with a soup from Simply Recipes that I’d already planned on making. (It’s definitely a soup-kind-of-a-day; cold and rainy) Starting with my next grocery trip, I’ll be trying some of the more adventurous recipes from the Texas Cowboy cookbook. I’ll most likely make some changes along the way, like I usually do - substituting chicken, pork, or buffalo for the beef, since we are mostly off of beef these days.

Growing up as a Yankee, I’d never had cornbread much at all. Since my husband loves it, I’ve learned to like it and almost always make corn bread with chili and maybe now and then for other meals. This will be the first time I’ve put jalapenos in it, though.

My normal recipe for cornbread can be found here.

And special thanks to my friend Aly, and her blog, who always makes me feel good about my cooking.

Add comment February 11th, 2010