Day 143: lusciously pink and deliciously buttery
Crumble. Perhaps one of the most comforting and evocative desserts in existence. Well, that and pie. And there are so many different varieties of both: all-year-round favourites, as well as those dictated by the changing seasons, or any seasonal pickings we’ve held back in the freezer, or preserved in jars. (I could go on for longer about the ‘humble’ crumble, but quite frankly I’d like to get on with cooking my dinner at some point soon. Also, many other, more talented, writers have explored this territory already).
Personally, I’ve never been a huge fan of hot desserts (like sticky toffee pudding, crumble, pie, treacle sponge, spotted dick, jam roly-poly, to name a few) and I certainly never followed my friends’ excitement when custard-drenched sponges were on the menu at school. I’d often just opt out of a dessert altogether, or go for the toffee yoghurt. As I grew older, I discovered it wasn’t a dislike of hot desserts: it was a dislike of hot custard. Serve ice cream with any of the aforementioned, give it sufficient time to melt over the hot pudding, and I’d dive right in.
However, dessert-life became a fabulous place for me when we moved to Norway when I was introduced to cold vanilla sauce, or vaniljesaus. It’s cool, smooth, sweetly fragrant with vanilla, and sold in cartons. It totally changed my take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards hot desserts to a deep please-can-I-have-some-more love for them, and I would obviously bowl up with a higher ratio of sauce to pud. I’m pretty sure my Mum would heat this vaniljesaus, which never impressed me, but I’d always get a little jug of it cold, and all to myself. The best equivalent here in the UK I’ve managed to source from the shops is the Madagascan vanilla custard you can buy from the fridge aisles. You just serve it as it is, unheated, to mimic that cool, silky, sweet vanilla sauce.
Even as an adult, when my husband and I started to host dinners, I’d ask around the table who wanted hot custard and who wanted cold custard, and I’d get the oddest of looks from people. So, I’d just heat the majority of the custard and keep myself a little jug of it cold. Next thing you know, everyone’s having a pour of the cold custard over their dessert. My cold custard! Nope. Don’t get me started. Now, I just do a big jug of each (it’ll never be wasted). Perhaps I should explore making my own custard or vaniljesaus soon as well.
I do prefer the stone fruit crumbles - like plum, peach, nectarine - over the apple or berry ones, but I have always had a deep love for rhubarb. Again, I usually ate cooked rhubarb cold as a child: stewed with sugar, cooled, and then folded into whipped egg whites - a kind of non-dairy fool I guess. My augmented version of this now includes cream, vanilla and sometimes mascarpone.
With a glut of rhubarb growing in the garden and a need for something sweet, and fairly quick, I think it made perfect sense to finally give Nigella’s Rhubarb Crumble its own feature in this cookalong.
Nigella’s Rhubarb Crumble
This recipe is in the festive/winter section of Feast and it stipulates that the earlier, forced rhubarb should be used, as it's in season, giving a filling that’s sweet, soft and almost ludicrously pink. It’s not in season now, however, but I still adore the taste of the summer-harvested rhubarb: it’s beautifully tart and full of flavour, though when you cook it down it can amalgamate into a khaki sludge (not that that matters). Compared to the shop-bought rhubarb available in shops around me this time of year, our stems are beautifully pink at their base - not just superficially, but deep into their fibrous flesh too - and although appearance isn’t everything, I've used these pinker ends for this crumble; chopping and freezing the greener ends with sugar in an airtight bag for use another day.
I halved quantities, to feed a smaller crowd and fill a smaller dish, but I don’t think I reduced the amount of cornflour enough because there wasn’t much sauce. Also, these stems weren’t quite as juicy as you might find in an earlier harvest. In hindsight, I should have added a few tablespoons of liquid in addition. Nevertheless, it was divine and enjoyed with cold vanilla-bean flecked custard. Heaven.
Flavour musings
I think I’ve wittered on enough now!
A deliciously buttery, crunchy crumb atop a beautifully tart, fragrantly sweet, lusciously pink rhubarb filling, served hot with cold vanilla bean-flecked custard, or vaniljesaus: about as close to heaven as you can get without actually walking through the gates.
The recipe for Nigella’s Rhubarb Crumble can be found in Feast.
