I love cooking things that grow in my yard or in my
neighborhood. But even more, I love canning what I cook and enjoying it far out
of season.
Every year, when the apple trees along the road on which I
live grow heavy with fruit, I harvest bags of apples to make butter and
molasses. For the last few years, I have experimented by adding wine and
spices, thinking that whatever could be mulled would be delicious in apple butter.
The experiments have paid off. Throughout the winter and spring, I spread thick
apple butter on toast or mix it with butter and chopped walnuts to put on
waffles or French toast.
Though it’s not apple season yet, it is, however, rhubarb
season. Though most harvest rhubarb only in late spring, it can be harvested
judiciously all summer if you don’t let the plants flower.
Years ago, a former colleague, Sue Jellison, graciously gave
me rhubarb plants, and though I have used those red and green stalks to make
cranberry-rhubarb jam for a few years, this summer, I decided to experiment. While
the rhubarb molasses didn’t turn out well, the rhubarb syrup did, but the real
joy was tasting my first batch of rhubarb butter.
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| Rhubarb buttter and warm double-cream cheese. |
As one might expect, it takes a fair amount of sugar to
sweeten it up, but the result of combining rhubarb, sugar, cinnamon, heat and
time is a thick, sweet-tangy spread that is delicious on toast, with cheese, or
even as a substitute for the traditional sweet-tangy accompaniment to egg
rolls, duck sauce. Try mixing it with a little maple syrup and butter to put on
pancakes.
Rhubarb Butter
Makes 4 cups
6 cups chopped rhubarb stalks
3 cups sugar
½ tbl. ground cinnamon
Stir the chopped rhubarb stalks – the leaves are toxic – and
the sugar in a pot. Let it sit till the sugar is wet with moisture from the
fruit. This might take 20 minutes. If the fruit doesn’t yield much moisture,
add ½ cup of water. Bring the fruit and sugar to a boil over medium-high heat,
stirring occasionally. Remove the pot from the heat and add the cinnamon. Other
spices could be added to taste, ½ tsp. of dried ginger perhaps, or any other
spice associated with rhubarb pie.
Pour the mixture into a slow cooker. Heat it on high for
about an hour with the cover ajar to let moisture escape. High heat at first
speeds up the reduction process when the mixture is wettest and least likely to
burn, but it could be started on low.
Scrape the sides and stir the mixture with a rubber spatula.
Using an immersion blender, process the mixture in the slow cooker till there
are no more chunks. Reduce the heat to low and cook the sauce with the cover ajar
till the volume of the mixture is reduced by one-third or one-half, scraping
and stirring occasionally. I prefer it thicker, so reduced mine by one-half. Depending
on your slow cooker, this could take from a few hours to several. Test the
sauce for taste and thickness occasionally, keeping in mind that it will
thicken as it cools.
Store the rhubarb butter in clean jars in the refrigerator
or process it as you would jam in a hot water bath.
