Spring treats

I love spring, I really do, because it marks the beginning of the rhubarb season. That's not the only reason of course, the days are longer, brighter and warmer, the other plants in the garden are growing madly ready to produce (fingers crossed) large batches of veggies for us and you can start walking about without three million layers on.

However, the rhubarb alone makes these months pretty ace all round. I love it's tartness and the fabulous mix of bright pink and green flesh. As I think I might have mentioned before, the rhubarb plant in our garden is only just ready for harvest, and I have been putting it off as I want to make something really rather special with the first crop to come from our North London garden. So I have been relying on Abel and Cole for my rhubarb fix. They have been very obliging and yesterday morning I opened our fruit box and was greeted by a nice big bunch of the stuff.

I wanted to use it as fresh as possible, which is always best with food that is picked like rhubarb is, but I didn't want to make another compot as I though N might get a bit sick of them. I explained to him about wanting to use it fresh, and wanting to save our own for something special and he replied "as long as we get at least one crumble I'll be happy." And there is was; a perfect treat for a spring evening and my new food adventure.

I've never made rhubarb crumble before, and when N said that if I made one he'd have to go out and get custard I raised the stakes and said "no problem, I'll make custard from scratch, how hard can it be?!" Hmm...

The answer is...not that hard! Whoo! I misread the recipe and didn't add the right amount of sugar, so it wasn't as sweet as it should have been, but apart from that it went really well. I used a Delia Smith recipe from her complete cookery course that is basically just cream, egg yolks, sugar, vanilla and corn flour. Very easy and I shall no doubt break it out again sometime, perhaps with that second teaspoon of sugar.

Ah, there is nothing quite so comforting as homemade rhubarb crumble and custard. I hadn't had it since I was a kid and it was wonderful.

While I am posting, I might as well mention our main course, since I don't post enough about the savoury things we try. I wanted something light since we were planning on eating dessert and so suggested salad. Knowing salad alone wouldn't fill N up we had it with bruschetta. It was lovely. Nice, light and another great reminder of the vegetables and flavours that spring and summer will yield.




p.s Sorry about the naff pictures today. The camera wasn't keen on focusing for some reason so they came out a little blurred, plus I was in a hurry to eat everything so I couldn't be bothered to take loads to get the perfect shot!