More Rhubarb
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Are you sick of rhubarb recipes yet friends. I’m not! I know I know, I’ve posted about it 2 times already this month but rhubarb season is so fleeting and I think it will still be a couple more weeks before we start seeing local strawberries and blueberries and other kinds of fruit that, when I first see them, make me start dancing in the aisles of my local green grocers.
Which is all to say that there are another couple weeks, if we’re being optimistic, it would probably be more realistic to say a month or so but I am nothing if not an optimist, before we have any other fruit and so I feel a huge need to make the most of rhubarb season.
This is a tart that I`ve been making for a long time. My first ever restaurant job introduced me to both brown butter, butter that`s been cooked until the milk solids turn a pretty walnut colour and it starts to smell like hazelnuts, and brown butter pastry, when you mix that wonderous stuff with eggs and sugar and vanilla and a tiny bit of flour to hold it all together .
Some of you may be intimidated by the short crust pastry, or pie dough, but I really encourage you to try it. It is way easier then you think, and I made sure to take pictures at every step so you have a visual.
Tart Dough
1 cup (half a pound) of Cold Unsalted Butter, cut into chunks
2 cups of AP Flour
about 1/4 cup ice cold water
Cut the butter into the flour. That means break it up into pieces. Your not trying to mix the butter and flour, your simply trying to get chunks of butter throughout. If your worried about it, err on the side of making it to big.
Add in the water, just a tablespoon at a time until it is just barely barely combined. It’s best to have it on the dry side, but if you add a little to much just add a little more flour.
Now flour your counter space and carefully press it into a rectangle. The fold it in half and do it again.
And again, and again, until it starts to feel firm. Your adding layers at this point, making your tart almost in between a pie dough and a puff pastry, which is to saw your making your dough delicious.
Now get it in the fridge for at least an hour, or until it really sets up.
In the mean time:
Roasted Rhubarb
4 cups of chopped rhubarb, about 10 stalks
1 1/2 cups sugar
Preheat the oven to 400F
Lay the rhubarb on a parchment lined tray.
Sprinkle the sugar ontop.
Get it in the oven! Roast it until it starts to get soft but before it breaks down, anywhere between 12-25 minutes depending on the size of your rhubarb
Now make the brown butter pastry
1/2 cup Sugar
2 Large Eggs
1/4 cup AP Flour
1/2 cup Butter
1 tbsp Vanilla
Get your butter in a pot, not a frying pan, it will sizzle up, and cook it on medium heat.
It will get all foamy, then it will get clear again. The it gets foamy again, and you won’t be able to see the bottom well but swirl the pan around and smell it lots. The smell will be like hazelnuts and the bottom will start to get a pretty brown. As soon as this happens get it out of the pot and into a bowl, or it will burn
In another bowl get the eggs and the sugar combined. Add in the vanilla.
Add in the butter and then the flour
And now your ready to assemble!
Roll out the dough and cut it out. I didn’t have a round cutter that was big enough so I used a bowl
Put about a tablespoon of brown butter mix in the center of the circles. The fill up the space with rhubarb. Make sure you leave space to fold the edges over.
Now fold up the edges
And then finish and put them back in the fridge for another twenty minutes
Beat an egg and brush it on the tops of the pastry, then sprinkle some sugar on top.
and bake it up! The pastry will get a lovely brown the rhubarb will caramelize and you will be in pastry heaven!
