Roasted rhubarb

A week or so back, Dad gave me some rhubarb stalks from the new garden and I finally got round to cooking them last night.

I had thought about making a traditional rhubarb and custard tart or a crumble but it was a hot day and reflecting on the thought of me bikini-clad in a fortnight’s time, I decided to roast it and pair with some low-fat crème fraiche!

Roasting is a great way to cook rhubarb as it doesn’t reduce down to that unappetising green pulp synonymous with the vegetable (yes, apparently it’s a vegetable!) and it keeps its vibrant colour. Being greedy when Dad offered it up I chose the fattest stalks I could find but I have learnt since that the finer stems are less eye-wincing and generally sweeter.

I chopped the rhubarb into 2 inch pieces in a bowl, grated half an orange zest ontop and doused the pieces with the juice of a whole orange. I added three heaped table spoons of Demerara sugar a generous swiz of vanilla extract and a few pinches of cinnamon and poured the mix evenly into a baking tin. Then left in the fan oven at full whack for 20 minutes.

The results were pretty and smelled good. The caramelised zest tasted like the banana tarte tatin I posted on here a while back. I served with crème fraiche but I think Greek yoghurt or custard would work equally well. My four stalks made about four portions worth so I stirred some into my pukkola breakfast this morning.

Prufrock Coffee, 140 Shoreditch High

Matthew introduced me to a cool new jaunt for caffeine junkies. It’s pretty inconspicuous as it’s housed in a men’s clothing shop called Present on Shoreditch High Street.

The shop itself confusingly has a sign which reads Golden Horn Cigarette Company to lead you off course but the coffee machine at the till front is a bit of a give away when you manage to track the place down.

The coffee is very good but then it would be, it’s served by the highly regarded mega-barista Gwilym Davies who won the World Barista Championships in 2009.

There is a small board which details the offerings: flat white, latte, cappuccino, cortado, espresso, macchiato, long black and coffee beans. Me and Matt both ordered flat whites- I like the texturised milk. It was on a par with the coffee they serve at flat white in Soho and Monmouth.

The clothes in the shop look like the sort of European utilitarian attire that you would expect from Shoreditch and the sort of rags I’d hope to own if I was a guy. The décor was fun with white machine gun mobiles floating above your head and colourful shoes resting on what looked like railway sleepers.

There’s no seating bar a small bench outside to perch, it’s really all about the coffee.

Fregola sarda

I finally tracked down a pack of fregola sarda- the Sardinian pasta that looks like couscous which I was raving on about in an earlier post! I didn't have to venture far as they were selling it cheaply at £1.50 a bag at a Borough saucisson stand- about time too!

I oven roasted some cerise orange tomatoes and red onion with garlic and chopped basil and threw it all together with the cooked fregola, asparagus and a bit of parmesan for a light dinner at the weekend.

The fregola is a bit deceptive as it swells up like big lentils once you’ve boiled it up so is a little hard to judge serving size. It’s semolina-based and tasted a bit like the hard dried spaghetti when it was not quite cooked. It took a good 12 mins to cook through, next time I’ll be adding some oil as some of the grains stuck to the bottom of the pan.

Now I’m on the scout out for some exciting recipes to try out with the remainder of the bag. This one from the Chocolate and Zucchini blog looks like a possible contender:

http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2009/10/fregola_sarda_with_zucchini_and_parmesan.php

L'Entrecote, Marylebone, W1

I've been a bit slack on the posts of late but there's been plenty of eating out since the weather heated up so I will try and make amends this month.

Last week I finally got round to trying Le Relais de Venise in Marylebone with my brother. Steak-frites is the only thing on the menu -apart from vegetarian options (they obviously don't count)- with a special peppery sauce which apparently remains a guarded secret. The place has built up a bit of a cult following so expect queues if you're going for dinner as they don't take bookings.

We only waited for 20mins for a table which was pretty good for a balmy summer Thursday evening though had to tolerate an obnoxious crowd of fifty-somethings who were cracking jokes about a scraggy female beggar who had asked for spare change- pretty disgusting behaviour.

Soon we got inside and were seated. They certainly pack the banquette tables in but it gives the place a Parisian buzz.

Twenty quid gets you a salad starter and steak-frites in "two servings"- either blue, rare, medium or well done. Rare was perfectly cooked, the two servings basically meant seconds of both steak and chips which was like Christmas come early.

Puds were predictable but tasty- I had a praline liegois (icecream with cream-coronary style) which was almost as good as Dad's brown bread icream, not quite though. Matt had a Grand Marnier semi-freddo which was a bit too alcofrolic for my liking.

Service-wise it is probably a bit too efficient for some as they like to turn tables quickly to ease the queueing outside but at least it's authentically French!