Jitterbug Perfume salad

Jitterbug Perfume is one of the most adventurous and unusual books I've ever read.  Any book that takes place in New Orleans and involves a Bohemian king, a widow from India and a satyr on a quest for eternal life is bound to be indescribably weird.  Tom Robbins likes to beat ideas into your head: he can describe everyday items with so much detail and poetry, it forces you to look at things anew. The object of his writing affection in this novel is that of a humble beet.  The way it smells, the way it looks, the way it tastes....it goes on for pages.  

I find myself craving and appreciating the humble beet root anew every time I read this book. 

   

                     

The perfume in title, without giving too much of the plot away, is a heavenly creation that enchants all with its sweet but earthy fragrance.  The composition of the perfume involves jasmine, orange blossom and beet pollen.  I thought this was a perfect combination of taste and scents for a salad.

Well, I wasn't the first to come up with this idea.  Ottolenghi beat me to it with this unusual combination, minus the jasmine.  Jasmine flowers, while edible, don't come around until July here.  If you can find them, add them! Still, I found the orange blossom water was a nice  floral note.  You can find bottles of orange blossom water for very little money if you have a middle eastern bodega in your neighborhood.  My local one sadly closed down and a plumbing store took its place, which does me no good at all.  Still, I have a small stash of cheaply acquired ingredients from them, which will live on in my pantry until I run out:  pomegranate molasses, tahini, z'atar spice, sumac, orange blossom water, rose water.  I was their best customer apparently.

The recipe might seem a weird combination of flavors, but trust me, it works.  Earthy sweet, bitter, floral, tart, salty, with a good amount of textures to work your way through as well.

Recipe: Beet, Blood Orange and Olive salad

adapted from Ottolenghi's Plenty.  Serves 2 as a main, 4 as a side

2 large beets, peeled and cooked- I cheat and use the pre-cooked ones found in the produce aisle
2 blood oranges, or navels if you can't find them
1 endive
½ small red onion, thinly sliced
3 tbsp chopped parsley
5 tbsp olives, pitted and halved
3 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp orange flower water
1½ tbsp red wine vinegar
a small handful of jasmine flowers (if you can find them)
salt and black pepper

Cut the cooked beats into bite-sized pieces.  Place the beets in a mixing bowl.

Peel the oranges.  Over your beet-bowl, segments the oranges by slicing
between the membranes. Transfer the segments and juice to the
bowl with the beets.


Cut the endive vertically into 1-inch-thick slices. Break them up
into separate leaves and add to the salad.

Finally, add the remaining ingredients and toss everything
together gently. Taste and adjust the seasoning, then serve.

Rhubarb Ginger Crumble

It's springtime!  Time for ludicrously priced precious early gems to start appearing at the farmer's markets.  The best of which might be the lovely pale pink stalks of rhubarb.  

I'm fairly unaccustomed to paying for this stuff.  Growing up, it's one of the few vegetables that "take" to Maine soil and climate.  Like zucchinis, by mid-summer, you are paying people to haul this away from you.  We would walk down to the end of the road where a nice couple with a large patch of it would indulge us and send us back up the hill with an armful of ruby-pink stalks, me impatiently nibbling on the end much like I would later do with the baguettes in Paris.  Getting home, we would be allowed to have a small bowl with sugar in it, dip the chewed end to coat, and then chew as much of the ultra-tart rhubarb as bearable before returning to mash the chewed end into sugar once again.  Why yes,  I did buy my dentist a boat, why do you ask?

Most of the rhizomes would get chopped up and frozen as there was usually just too much to handle all at once.  The obvious choice for it was to be paired with strawberries into tarts and pies.  This is still just classic and a favorite.

I started experimenting with this tart vegetable that we treat as a fruit in recent years.  It works well in savory dishes- stir-fried with pork belly, made into a chutney and spooned onto roasted duck breast.  The tartness complements fatty and rich dishes like no other, the flash of pink gives dishes a cheerful boost.

I found a new favorite courtesy of Ginger Pig.  This is a fantastic (and fantastically expensive) high-end butcher over in Borough Market.  They raise all the animals free-range on their farm in Yorkshire and are famous for almost everything they produce (I find their homemade pies irresistible).  They have a nice (although much more meat-heavy than what I usually go for) series of cookbooks that focuses on charming farmhouse-rustic-chic cooking where I found a recipe for a rhubarb ginger crisp.  This was a dashingly good combination.  The rhubarb cooked down to be submerged in a deeply caramelized syrup of spice and sweet-tart that I couldn't get enough of, especially when you have a half-melted scoop of vanilla ice cream to lovingly mop away at with the topping.  We licked the dishes clean- a perfectly wicked preview of good things to come from the garden.

Added bonus: this would work nicely with lots of fruit combinations, so feel free to add some frozen berries that you might have lying around.  It also freezes quite well, so it wouldn't be inhuman of you to make a double batch and save some for a lazier day.

I share it with you here.  

Recipe:  Rhubarb Ginger Crumble
from the Ginger Pig Farmhouse Cookbook
Serves 4-6.  Takes about 15 minutes active time, 1 hour total.

125g (41/2oz) chilled butter, cut into dice
125g (41/2oz) plain flour
50g (2oz) ground almonds, or almond flour
50g (2oz) rolled oats
700g (1lb 9oz) rhubarb, cleaned and chopped into inch-long pieces with the tough strings peeled off
20g (3/4oz) fresh ginger root: peeled and grated with a microplane or diced finely
50g (2oz) unrefined caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 180c/350f

Combine the butter and flour together in a bowl with a pastry cutter or your fingers until coarse crumbs form.  Add the almonds, sugar and oats and mix to combine.

Place the chopped rhubarb into an oven proof dish.  I am a bit poor in the baking dish department and used two, and then froze the smaller one for later.  You could use a pie or tart dish, whatever!  As long as all the rhubarb fits and you have a bit of clearance for the topping.

Add the ginger and the sugar to the rhubarb and mix the whole mess together.  Spoon the crumble mixture over the top.

Place the dish(es) on a baking sheet (this is pretty important if you don't want a smoky sugary syrup mess on the bottom of your oven).  Bake for 40 minutes, until golden brown and bubbly.

Let cool for a minute, if you can wait.  Molten sugar is not pleasant to be slinging around your kitchen!  Serve with ice cream (strawberry comes to mind, but vanilla was just grand) and a sprig of mint.