Rhubarb Yogurt Bread, Slice of Montreal

When my family used to travel, my mother would always pack a cooler of road snacks.  It contained all the usual suspects you’d expect from a lady who once gave her child a yogurt-filled Easter basket.  Baby carrots.  Grapes.  Nutri·Grain bars.  And some sort of homemade loaf or muffin, if we were lucky. 

On these trips, I got the sense that the kids in other vans were having way more fun, feeding each other Bubble Tape and licking their barbeque chip-flavored fingers.  But now I am very thankful for my mother—queen of quick breads—and her health habits.  And today I have this rhubarb yogurt loaf, a recipe from the mom files.  One of my favorites. 

I packed some for the car ride up to Montreal, for Dave’s birthday a few weeks ago.  And I am barely exaggerating when I say it was the only non-animal thing we had while we were up there.  Ever had a meat hangover?  Not pretty.  By day five I was picking the pepperoni off my pizza and fighting a case of reflux no amount of Tums could right.

But I had asked for it.  We took on Canadian eating as a sport.  Our trip was marked by the best food and drink I've had in a very, very long time. 

There were Aperol spritzers in a small, candlelit scotch den called Big in Japan.  Curried ribs at the Liverpool House, a seaside cottage meets old-timey club car establishment and sister restaurant to Joe Beef.  And a comforting bowl of celery root baked eggs with a side of chewy, butter-laced sourdough at Lawrence for brunch.

And a refreshing plate of seasonal vegetables (!) showcasing sea beans and the very last bottle of Tokaji Furmint Sec at Pullman bar à vin.  Christmas dinner of stuffed pig foot with foie gras and roast guinea hen atop cheese curd potatoes at Au Pied de Cochon.  A place known for all things excess.  Plus their sugar pie. 

And chèvre from Jac le Chevrier and spicy pork sausage sliced with a pocket knife, eaten standing up Atwater market.  Hot sesame bagels out of the wood-fired oven at St-Viateur, schmeared with cream cheese and salmon. A few bites of Dave’s smoked meat sandwich with yellow mustard at Schwartz’s plus a big, thick pickle on small white plate.  (By this time I was getting pretty full.)

We finished with too many glasses of wine at Bocata with Malcolm, our personal wine guide thanks to a slow Monday night in Old Montreal.  Plus fried sea smelts with aioli and a haunting, simple appetizer of toasted bread topped with tomato and Iberico sliced at the bar.  (Let’s not mention the blueberry pastry from Olive + Gourmando for the ride home.)

It wasn’t until we were en route back to Boston with a cooler filled with foie gras, a hundred dollars worth of Canadian cheese, some sausage, and a few cases of Heady Topper from Vermont that I realized my mother’s habits had gone awry.

Luckily, I still have her rhubarb bread recipe.  Which I've eaten for breakfast on a few occasions since I’ve been back.  It’s nutty and chewy, with a slight tang from the lemon peel and rhubarb that stud it.  Cutting it into thick morning time slices feels nourishing, without being overly virtuous. A perfect compliment for the diet of sea creatures and plant-based edibles I’ve put myself on since I’ve been back.

Lest we not forget, rhubarb is actually a vegetable.

Rhubarb Yogurt Bread

Adapted from mom

Ingredients:

1¾ cup all-purpose flour, plus 2 tbsp

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

½ tsp coriander seeds, ground

1½ cups muscovado sugar

1 egg

½ cup canola oil

1 cup whole milk yogurt

1 tsp vanilla

zest of 1 lemon

2 cups finely chopped rhubarb

Instructions:

Grease two loaf pans (I used a 7 x 3½ and 10 x 3½).  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Sift 1¾ cups all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, baking soda, salt, and ground coriander into a medium bowl.  In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat the sugar, egg, and oil until thoroughly combined (a minute or so).  Add in the yogurt, vanilla, and zest and mix until fully incorporated.  While the mixer is running, slowly add in the flour mixture and then turn off the mixer (it’s okay if you can still see bits flour). 

In a small bowl, toss the rhubarb pieces with the remaining 2 tbsp flour.  With a rubber spatula, mix in the rhubarb until fully incorporated and the flour is no longer visible, but take care not to over mix.

Pour into your greased pans and bake for 45-55 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted into the center of the loaves.  Let cool on a wire rack.

Makes “1 large loaf and 1 small loaf” per my mother

Notes:

-I am fairly confident this bread can take even more rhubarb, if you have it.  The rhubarb melts into the bread and doesn’t overpower.

-I used dark muscovado sugar because I had it hanging around, though I do think I’d prefer light in this recipe.  The difference is minor—just a slightly darker color and hint of molasses. (The original calls for light brown sugar.)

-Mom is also a wee bit more health-conscious than her dietitian daughter, apparently.  She uses low fat yogurt and more whole wheat than white flour.  The lemon peel and coriander were my additions.  Because I can never leave well enough alone.

In Rhubarb Kumquat Jam We Trust

I’m a believer in jam. I think a society that deals in filled and sealed jam jars as its currency is probably pretty happy as a whole. Swapping blueberry jam for boysenberry couldn’t possibly breed ill will. People would be too busy baking biscuits for smothering with fruit spread to worry much about a looming apocalypse or adulterous politico. In jam we trust.

Think about it. With jam everybody wins.

Rhubarb jam on toast on another unseasonably disagreeable day may feel as precious as gold when you’re at the breakfast table. And things have gotten pretty complicated for us here. So let’s slow down. Make some jam.

Homemade jam is a bottled season that you can open whenever you need a little pick-me-up. A reminder that there is still good that comes from the world turning and time passing. Yes, it is has been rainy and cool for weeks here, but I know its spring because I can see ruby red rhubarb. And when I talked to my mother yesterday she had just picked a few stalks to make some loaves of rhubarb bread. It made me homesick.

Yes, I had that kind of childhood. I grew up with loaves of quick bread and jars of homemade jam made with fruit picked by my house or from a nearby orchard we’d travel to in our minivan. So I have a sweet spot for the stuff. (Please note: I do not—nor will I ever—have a sweet spot for minivans. Especially maroon-colored ones.)

While my life isn’t currently filled with rhubarb plants and blackberry bushes in convenient proximity, having a steady supply of homemade jam certainly doesn’t hurt. It’s also entirely possible to pull off. For credibility with this, I point to The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook by Rachel Saunders. It’s divided into delicious seasons and features classics like East Coast blueberry jam, as well as pairings that place cardamom and orange marmalade together (at last!).

So I couldn’t resist when I found kumquats for Saunders’ rhubarb kumquat jam. The tiny oval-shaped citrus is a lovely counterpart to the rhubarb and the jam has enough sugar to soothe the face pucker that rhubarb often provides. This spread is pleading for a partner in the buttermilk scone department. But it’s also lovely eaten simply by the spoonful, sitting on a kitchen stoop. (Mine has definitely seen a fair amount of jam action going down recently.)

So if someone is selling a society based on jam, I’m buying. I’ll happily collect my rhubarb jam, pack up, and ship out. I’m certain this jam is better than a greenback: good for most debts, public and private, and far superior on scones.

Rhubarb Kumquat Jam

Adapted from The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook

3.5 pounds trimmed rhubarb stalks, cut into 2 inch chunks

6.75 cups sugar

5 ounces fresh lemon juice

3/4 pound kumquats, sliced into thin rounds and seeds removed

A few drops of orange blossom water

Day 1

Place rhubarb in a large non-reactive stock pot and pour sugar over it; add lemon juice and let steep for 24 hours at room temperature.

Day 2

Heat rhubarb on stovetop and add in kumquats, stirring well. Bring mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally. Continue to heat at a boil for about 20 minutes, stirring frequently and turning down the heat to prevent scorching, as necessary. Continue to stir the jam, almost constantly, for another 10 minutes or so to prevent it from sticking, until the jam has thickened.

To test for doneness, place a bit of jam on a spoon and put it on a plate in the freezer for a few minutes to see what the consistency of the jam will be like when cooled (you can also place the plate and spoon in the freezer ahead of time). When the desired consistency is reached (the jam shouldn't easily slip off the spoon) add the orange blossom water.

When your jam is done, pour into sterilized jars and process them for canning or simply place the jam in freezer-safe containers and store in your freezer, removing pints as needed.

Makes about 4 pints

Notes:

-Please note, this jam takes 24 hours plus to make.

-Saunders notes letting the rhubarb macerate for 24 hours at room temperature will help the rhubarb release its lovely juices.

-Whole Foods has orange blossom water, as will Middle Eastern grocers. You can always leave it out, but it adds a nice depth and subtle floral quality.

The Name is Rhubarb, Raspberry Rhubarb

This weekend is forecast as the last weekend possible for frost to threaten the Boston area until autumn; breathe a sigh of relief: warmer weather is here to stay. With spring in full force, I begin to play favorites with my produce, buying mostly what is in season and grown locally whenever possible. I shell more fava beans and English peas than any sane person ever would, but one of my favorite—and fairly low maintenance—foods to cook in the springtime is rhubarb.

Rhubarb is a fruit with many contradictions: for starters, it’s actually a vegetable. It’s typically seen in sweet dishes; eaten by itself, it would make you pucker. It’s a feisty, hardy plant, but softens up pretty quickly in a pan with the aid of a little heat. It grows fairly well without a lot of sunlight, which many edible plants do not. And, oddly enough, the leaves attached to the edible stalks of the rhubarb plant are lethal. I don’t know why, but having toxic parts makes me quite fond of rhubarb as a vegetable. Probably for the same reason why I like the planet Venus: it has an inhospitable climate and rains sulfuric acid, and can still pull off being a sultry symbol of beauty. Anyway, rhubarb is a lovely rose-colored hue and also holds court as the James Bond of produce, being cool, complex: and badass. The balance between allure and imminent death gets me every time.

Growing up, I can remember my mom sending me out to her garden to pick rhubarb for raspberry rhubarb pie. We lived in an area surrounded by trees and had only dappled sunlight; the rhubarb thrived. She also planted tulips, another sign of spring, but they didn’t fair quite as well. It wasn’t actually the limited sun that got them: it was the woodchucks. At night, they would bite the heads off my mother’s flowering tulips. Things got particularly ugly one spring when my mom had quite enough of her decapitated tulips: and my dad got the shotgun. I don’t really know if any woodchucks were actually killed (or that things ever really improved for my mother and her tulips). The woodchucks never did mess with the rhubarb though. They knew better.

While we humans can’t eat tulips, we can eat rhubarb, or at least the stalks. And so each spring I look forward to rhubarb. This year, I decided to really sex things up by adding some Grand Marnier and a hint of rose water. Don’t fret, roses are edible, though I suppose if you were trying to kill someone—James Bond style—you could always substitute tulips instead and throw in some rhubarb leaves for good measure.

Raspberry Rose Rhubarb Jam (After All, You Only Live Twice)

1 orange (preferably organic), juice and zest
1 to 1½ pounds rhubarb, divided
Pinch of salt
1¼ to 1½ cups sugar
1 vanilla bean pod
2/3 cup frozen raspberries, unsweetened
2 tbsp Grand Marnier, or other orange-flavored spirit
1-2 tbsp rose water*

*Whole Foods or a Middle Eastern grocer would carry this; you could also order it online from the spice company my sister works for in Chicago, they have truly amazing spices: The Spice House. Or just omit it or try almond extract instead for a less floral flavor.

Zest your orange and reserve the zest; if you don’t have a microplane, you can remove the white pith from the orange peel with a knife, cut the peel into thin strips, and then mince the peel. Cut your rhubarb into ½ inch pieces and add ¾ of the rhubarb to a pan with the juice of the orange and cook on medium heat. Add a pinch of salt, the orange zest, and about 1 cup or so of your sugar. Cut open the vanilla bean, scrap out the seeds, and then add both the seeds and pod to the rhubarb. Let it cook down, this will take about 10-20 minutes or so. Add the rest of the rhubarb and raspberries and let cook about 5-10 minutes more, adding additional sugar to taste and additional water if it starts getting too thick. Add the Grand Marnier and rose water and cook for about 1-2 minutes more, until the flavors blend. Remove the vanilla bean pod.

Makes about 1½-2 cups.

Notes:

I don’t bother with canning; I find freezing jam easier and less of a headache. If you are going to can this recipe, you may want to check on your sugar proportions. I freeze the jam in a glass jar with a metal lid, but any freezer safe container with a tight fitting top would work.

This jam is particularly indulgent with a little whole milk Greek yogurt for breakfast. Or, if you really want to be over the top, you could put the jam and a dollop of the yogurt (or freshly whipped cream, for that matter) on buckwheat pancakes. You’d be keeping it in the family: rhubarb and buckwheat are botanical cousins.