Rhubarb is the new breakfast.

It kept selling out in the first hours of the market. Pounds of red stalks, sitting in tubs behind the farmers, reserved for customers who had had more forethought than I. For three weeks I kept missing the rhubarb. So when I finally arrived at my local farmer's market while one of my favorite farmerstands still had red piles of the bitter plant on their tables, I bought two pounds of it. And then I had two pounds of rhubarb. And no plans.

Pie is, of course, the traditional thing to make with the brilliant stalks. It's usually paired with strawberries, to add sweetness and flavor to the mild, bitter, and somewhat stringy rhubarb. And I like it a lot. Maybe I'll go there. But it's been rather hot of late, and I've been trying to avoid using the oven.

Plus i was in New York a few weeks ago, to watch my little sister perform a crazy, awesome, intense play with lots of dildos, and while I was there, I stopped to get some shaved ice with a friend of mine. The awesome shaved ice dude was using a rhubarb syrup, and I was surprised at the delicate taste that resulted. And thought, "hey, I could do that. I could do that and then use it for drinks!"

I made two different syrups, one just rhubarb and the other with an additional mix of ginger and orange zest. After checking with the usual food blogs and doing a few google searches I used this recipe as a base, which is also where the idea for the ginger came from.

This is a very subtle syrup - sweet, not very strong, and we kept adding more to our cheap, sparkling wine so that we could taste the rhubarb. Turns out, the reason it's so rarely seen on its own is that rhubarb is a fairly bland, mild flavor. Although very pretty.

Adding the ginger, and about a tablespoon of orange zest helped considerably. Although my love of all things ginger has already been documented here, so take that recommendation with a grain of salt.

For me, the big success was the remaining solids - mixed together (and therefore rather gingery) they make a pretty lovely jam!

So we had rhubarb jam-stuff and biscuits and rhubarb-mimosas with our coffee and chorizo con huevos the next morning.

Rhubarb: It's what's for breakfast.

Rhubarb Syrups

Boil, then simmer for 20 minutes:

4 cups (1 and 1/3 lbs) chopped rhubarb

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

Strain (ideally through cheesecloth) and refrigerate. 

Retain solids and use them as you would jam. 

For rhubarb-ginger syrup, boil, then simmer for 20 minutes:

2 cups (2/3 lb) chopped rhubarb

6 or 7 slices of peeled, fresh ginger, about 1/3 inch thick (maybe about two inches of ginger root?)

1 tb orange zest

Strain and refrigerate. 

Retain solids and use them as you would jam. 

For drinking, combine:

1 part chilled rhubarb syrup

3 parts chilled, cheap sparkling wine

Essence of Raspberry

We went fruit picking again. Remember this pie? All those beautiful berries are from Weaver's Orchard, a bit of a drive from Philadelphia, but well worth the trip. And one of the primary reasons for picking this particular farm was a NYT recipe for raspberry vinegar, discovered by a fellow fruit-picking Philadelphia foodie (say it ten times fast). Turns out it's less of a vinegar and more of a syrup, which only increases its potential uses. Which is good, because this recipe makes a LOT.

(Not that I wanted to share it with any of the free-loading fruit flies that have recently invaded our kitchen)





The pile of raspberries is supposed to macerate in a bit of red wine vinegar for three days. I kept getting distracted (pie! ice cream! internet!) and let it sit for about five. I pretended that this was intentional and improves the intense raspberryness. Maybe it did.

The mixture is then strained through cheesecloth. SUPER MESSY. There was juicy red sweetness on my hands, on the counter, on the floor, and maybe on one of the cats. Luckily some also made it into the bowl.

The reason this is more of a syrup than a vinegar is because the next step involves adding the liquid to a slightly-larger-than-equivalent pile of sugar and simmering it. This stuff is SWEET.



The final step works really well if your housemate has a cool looking empty wine bottle available.

This recipe complimented complemented our raspberries so well. We arrived at the height of the season, meaning the raspberries were extremely sweet and, while flavorful, the individual raspberry taste was not particularly strong. The concentrated syrup, however, is intensely raspberry-y. It's a marvelous accompaniment to pancakes, seltzer, or a little rum. And I'm looking forward to finding more uses for it. It's going to be a lovely reminder of summer once the hot, muggy berry season is past.

Photo credit goes to a lovely lady.