The sweet crumble topping for this recipe, like the savoury crumble mix for Ratatouille Crumble, uses leftover bread instead of flour. Bread crusts and unused slices can be frozen and kept until needed, so avoiding waste. A simple food processor can be used to crumble the bread, margarine and sugar together, but this can also be made by hand. The sweet crumble mix itself can also be bagged for the freezer, and will defrost quickly.
In Europe, rhubarb is often regarded as a cheap family meal because many people grow it in their gardens, especially in rural and older suburban areas. ‘Crowns’ of rhubarb are easily split and passed around, and seem to go on forever, producing their characteristic tall reddish-fading-to-green stalks and large fan-shaped leaves every spring.
Rhubarb is Good Eating – But is it a Fruit or a Vegetable?
Because only the stalk is eaten, rhubarb is still considered a vegetable in Europe, although it is almost always used more like a fruit, in that sugar is added. For that very reason, in the USA it was officially classified as a fruit for tax purposes by a 1947 New York court judgement.
Its main use today is for various kinds of desserts, such as crumbles, tarts, pies, and fools, but it also makes good jam and chutney, and a sweet-and sour sauce for meat.
When to Buy the Best and Cheapest Rhubarb
It is a hardy plant in cooler areas, with a growing season from February (from hothouses) to September, by which time the stalks are getting tough and beginning to die back for the winter. It will be available during the winter months from warmer areas or hothouses but will be more expensive then, so the best and cheapest time to buy it for cooking and freezing is April-May (northern hemisphere).
Rhubarb will grow all year round in sub-tropical areas, but here it will often ‘bolt’ or run to seed quickly and become tough. When grown outside, it is best picked when the stalks are no more than one inch thick.
Easy Rhubarb Crumble Recipe
Ingredients:
- 6 or more large sticks of rhubarb or equivalent in smaller sticks
- 6 generous tbs of sugar
- 3 tbs of orange juice, with some grated rind if the juice is fresh.
Directions:
- Remove the leaves completely and trim the stalk bases.
- Cut roughly into cubes and wash thoroughly.
- Place in a pan with no more than 3 tbs of orange juice or water.
- Add sugar and let it dissolve over a moderate heat.
- Allow to stew gently for 3-5 minutes
- Place in an ovenproof dish and turn on oven to moderate heat.
Tip: Rhubarb contains a lot of water, and it is better to remove surplus juice with the flat of a spoon at this stage than let it spill over when in the oven. It can always be added to more orange juice and drunk, or thickened and served in a jug for pouring over.
Easy Crumble Mix Recipe
Ingredients:
- 3 or 4 slices or crusts of any kind of bread (using different kinds together is fine)
- 2 oz or a couple of tablespoon scoops of margarine or butter
- Around half a cup of sugar, white or brown.
Directions for the Crumble Mix and to Assemble Dish
- Sprinkle and smooth over the partly cooked rhubarb.
- Cook for about 10 to 15 minutes in a moderate oven until the crumble topping is golden brown.
Serving Suggestions:
- As rhubarb tends to be very tart, have some extra sugar or honey available.
- Counteract the acidity by serving this easy crumble with something milk-based, such as yoghurt, cream, ice-cream or custard.
- Instead of orange to complement rhubarb’s delicious flavour, try cinnamon and nutmeg.
- Reduce the amount of sugar used, and also the acidity, by adding some dessert apples to the rhubarb at the stewing stage.Normal0falsefalsefalseMicrosoftInternetExplorer4
Kate Nivison - Kate Nivison has published 2 novels, over 250 short stories and travel features, visited 74 countries and written about most of them.
