I am guilty of getting obsessed with some things culinary – recipes by a certain chef, for example Nigel Slater, a favourite dish like posset or fruit curds, a place to shop like the Oxford Covered Market, an ingredient along the lines of lamb shoulder, rhubarb, lemons or star anise…
Today I got to satisfy a couple of my current obsessions in one fell swoop and in so doing created a simple supper for a group of friends.
It all started at the Oxford Covered Market a few days ago. I was dawdling though the market marveling at the array of food shops – fishmonger to cheese shop,
butcher to coffee shop,
Italian delicatessen to green grocer
– when my eye settled on a couple of boxes of rhubarb.
There was no way I’d be going home without a bag of rhubarb. The question was which of the two types would it be? The one lot were elegant thin prettily pink sticks from the Wye Valley at £6.95 and the others were from Yorkshire – heftier, darker, more sculptural stems adorned with lovely leafy fronds. Price £4.95 per kilo. Impossible to choose.
‘They’ll be sweeter, won’t they?’ said the greengrocer of the delicate pink ones, and I suspected he was right. But what if the less beautiful, cheaper ones actually had a better flavour? I mean it’s not all about sweetness with rhubarb, is it?
After spending an agonizing few minutes weighing my options,I decided I had better have some of each. I’d do a taste test.
As I was paying for the rhubarb the greengrocer asked rather tentatively ‘Have you bought rhubarb before, then?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but not from you.’
‘It’s quite old fashioned isn’t it? Generally, it’s older people who buy it.’ Hmmm, well what exactly did he mean, I thought indignantly.
But all I said was, ‘Really?’ And then he came out with a real shocker.
‘To be honest, I’ve never cooked it myself… What are you going to do with it?’ He sold the stuff — how was it possible that he’d never cooked it? Somehow, though, his ignorance gave me all the assurance he lacked. This is what I told him:
‘I’m going to slow-roast a shoulder of lamb on a bed of rhubarb and then make a rhubarb posset for dessert.’ The thought of making two batches of the same thing merely to test which of the varieties of rhubarb was the better seemed like a very shoddy one indeed and I jettisoned it without a qualm.
The greengrocer was suitably impressed, and I marched out of the Covered Market with my double pack of rhubarb, and a steely determination to prove that it’s not something that the old, but rather the adventurous, use to create a memorable dish.
Back at our temporary residence in Cumnor, just west of Oxford, I dug out (on the internet) a couple of old favourites: Nigel Slater’s recipe for lamb cutlets cooked with rhubarb and his rhubarb posset. Then I dashed down the road to Michael Cain & Family Butchers to buy a free range lamb shoulder.
Rhubarb Posset
I changed Nigel’s recipe slightly and oven roasted the rhubarb with a stick of cinnamon, three fresh bay leaves, the rind of a lemon, 10 black peppercorns and a cup of water. Then once the rhubarb was cooked I reduced the reserved liquid by boiling it with the the bay leaves, cinnamon, peppercorns and lemon rind for ten minutes.
Slow cooked lamb shoulder
I rubbed the lamb with seven spice power, chili flakes, salt and pepper and placed it on the bed of chopped onion, rhubarb, celery and a small handful of star anise in the base of a heavy ovenproof dish. I roasted it covered for about five hours at 140 C. Serve with a gravy made from the vegetables.All you need to go with this is a simple green salad and maybe potatoes. Or celeriac purée à la Nigel Slater.
Exploring Eating 