Lemon Linguine, Vinaigrette and Rhubarb Tart
Our house came with rhubarb plants, which come up every year regardless of what I do or don’t do in the yard. I noticed one of our three plants (two of which are green; one is red) had begun to flower. Some sites say to remove the flowers, so while I was cutting I did my first harvest.
I froze the rhubarb last year, and found it unpleasantly mushy when I went to use it later. So this year, I used it as an excuse to make Nigella Lawson’s “Spring Lunch to Lift the Spirits” from How to Eat, which includes Lemon Linguine, Green Salad, and Irish Tarte Tatin.
While I appreciate Nigella’s “everyone can do it,” laissez-faire approach to cooking, I find her recipes sometimes hard to follow (recipes should NOT be written as prose) and a little sloppy (she directs you to taste _raw_ rhubarb and adjust for sugar?), so here are my adaptations.
Lemon Linguine (serves 4)
1 pound linguine
1 egg yolk (reserve white for Irish Tarte Tatin)
1/3 cup of heavy cream
1/4 cup of freshly grated parmesan
Zest of 1 lemon and juice of 1/2, plus more juice if needed
Pinch of salt
Freshly milled black pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons of chopped parsley
Bring 4 quarts of water to the boil. Add 1 tablespoon salt, then pasta. Cook pasta according to package directions, but set timer for a minute or more less than what the box advises.
In a bowl, whisk the yolks, cream, parmesan, zest and juice, salt and a few grinds of pepper.
Test pasta for doneness. Reserve a 1/2 cup of liquid; drain. Return to pot off heat, add butter and stir until melted. Stir in egg mixture until pasta is coated, adding liquid by tablespoons if it looks dry. Divide among plates, sprinkle with parsley and serve.
Salad Dressing (my own, not Nigella’s)
1/4 c. oil
1 Tbl. white wine vinegar
1 Tbl. lemon juice
1 tsp. sugar
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. dry mustard
1 small garlic clove, minced
Shake to combine. Can be stored for three days.
Irish Tarte Tatin
2 lbs. rhubarb, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 1/4 c. sugar
Topping (from Cook’s Illustrated’s recipes for scones):
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
3/4 cup whole milk
Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 450 degrees.
Place rhubarb in pie dish; pour sugar over. Whisk first 5 ingredients of topping together in large bowl. By hand, with pastry blender, or 2 knives, mix butter into flour mixture until mixture resembles coarse meal with a few slightly larger butter lumps.
Make a well in the center of mixture and pour in milk. Working quickly, blend ingredients together with a rubber spatula into a soft, slightly wet dough. Knead dough a few times in bowl, then turn onto a well-floured work surface.
Pat or roll dough to 1/2 inch thick round. Place on top of rhubarb. Brush with egg white and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 15 minutes. Lower oven temp to 350, bake for 30 more minutes. Remove from oven, let cool for at least 5 minutes. Nigella recommends turning it upside down, which will likely result in a burn, then serving with brown sugar and cream, or custard. I recommend cutting the top, spooning out the bottom, and serving with vanilla ice cream.
May 8th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
i’m a big fan of rhubarb crisp.
May 8th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
I’ve got two more plants to harvest; a crisp may yet occur. But there’s a recipe I found for custard pie that’s speaking to me, and I made a fool last year that was very tasty, so only time will tell which recipes make the cut.