For me, rhubarb is one of those flavors that tell me that spring has finally arrived. I love its tart freshness, but I think it’s best in combination with other flavors — on its own, rhubarb can be a little overpowering. The traditional pairing with strawberries won’t work for us right now because Julia has developed a mild childhood allergy (she gets blotchy for a couple of hours after she eats strawberries), so I needed some new candidates. Turns out, oranges and cinnamon are also good companions for rhubarb, and I’ve discovered two great recipes that make great use of that combination.
Here’s the first. It’s so simple you can easily make it for a weeknight dinner, but it’s pretty enough for guests, particularly if you pair the roasted fruit (vegetable?) with ice cream or whipped cream instead of the more virtuous option of nonfat greek yoghurt. However you dress it up, though, the key with rhubarb is to cook it until it’s soft and the flavor mellows but not until it’s a pile of pink stringy mush.
Recipe
(Serves 6, adapted from “Cinnamon panna cotta with spiced roasted rhubarb” in Ripe, a cook in the orchard by Nigel Slater)
Ingredients
About 1 lb (450g ) fresh rhubarb
4 tablespoons of honey
1 small orange
1 cinnamon stick, broken in half
4 star anise
Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 325F (170C). Trim the rhubarb, discarding leaves and any green parts, and cut it into about 2-inch lengths.
2. Transfer the rhubarb to a baking dish large enough to hold it in a single layer. Pour the honey over the rhubarb pieces. Grate the orange zest over the dish and then nestle in the star anise and the cinnamon stick. Cut the orange in half and squeeze its juice into the dish. Drop the spent orange hulls into the dish (they’ll release liquid during cooking) and cover it tightly with tinfoil.
3. Bake for about 30 minutes until the rhubarb is soft but still keeps its shape.
4. Remove the oranges and spices and serve the rhubarb pieces with plenty of the accumulated juices at room temperature or cold with whipped cream, vanilla ice cream, or Greek yoghurt sweetened with a bit of honey and dusted with cinnamon.
