The Munchies Blog

For those of you who do not speak Swedish, that would be “My Grandmothers Rhubarb Pie” (barbarians ,) ). It is not a pie in the traditional sense with a bottom, but it does have a nice crust. When I made it the rhubarb turned out to have a very nice texture, and a taste which was slightly sour, but not very. Perfect, in my humble opinion ;)

So, let’s get to the good stuff…

Take about 500 gr. of rhubarb,
1 dl sugar,
2 tsp potato flour.
Put the oven to 225 degrees C.

Peel and slice the rhubarb, mix with the sugar and the potato flour and put in the oven for 10-15 minutes.

While the rhubarb are in the oven to pre-cook, it’s time to prepare the crust.

Take 100g butter,
1 dl rolled oats,
0.5 dl sugar,
1.5 dl flour,
0.5 - 1 tsp cardamom (depending on how much you like it).

Mix it all together. When you think the rhubarb are done, crumble the mixture on top of the rhubarbs (using spoons didn’t work for me) and make sure to have an even layer.
Put it all into the oven again until the crust has a nice golden colour. It should take about 10-15 minutes.

Serve with custard or ice cream.

You can of course use different fruit or berries, but you might not have to pre-cook them in that case, and you might have to use a different amount of sugar. I will try it out with raspberries and blueberries soon.

I’ve wanted to make panna cotta ever since I first tasted it. My only problem with the recipe I had was that it requires gelatin, which I do eat but prefer to avoid in my own cooking. Fortunately, I recently spotted an Agar-based gelatin replacement in a local supermarket, so I decided to give it a try.

Panna cotta as I know it is usually served with berry compote. Unfortunately, it isn’t exactly berry season at the moment. I was thinking about using frozen berries, but then I remembered the blood oranges that were lying around in the kitchen and decided to go for blood orange sauce instead.

The panna cotta turned out really well, and the combination with the blood oranges proved to be a good one. As usual with panna cotta, everyone would have liked larger servings (knowing full well it was better for them that they didn’t get more). The fruit sauce itself was so nice that people finished off the sauce leftovers with the rest of the grated white chocolate.

Vegetarian Panna Cotta
5 servings of 100 ml each

• 200 g cream (30% fat)
• 300 ml milk (3.2% fat)
• gelatin replacement (or gelatin) for 500 ml liquid
• 1 vanilla pod
• 50 g sugar
• pinch of salt

Pour the cream and milk into a small saucepan. Slit open the vanilla pod lengthwise and scratch out the seeds. Put the seeds and the pod into the saucepan. Stir in the sugar. Refer to the gelatin replacement’s packaging for usage instructions and use accordingly. The stuff I had could just be stirred into the mixture (the only requirement was that it had to boil for at least 2 minutes). Bring the mixture to a simmer and let it simmer for some 15 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Prepare 5 small molds (capacity 100 ml) by washing them out with cold water (I’m not sure why this step is required, but my original recipe included this. It might make it easier to flip the panna cotta out of the molds before serving). Fill the cream mixture into the molds, let cool down a bit, then refrigerate for at least 2 hours, better overnight.

Take the panna cotta out of the fridge about an hour before serving. Flip them out of the molds if you like (I didn’t). Serve with (warm or cold, I used warm) blood orange sauce and grated white chocolate (from about 15 g white chocolate).

Blood Orange Sauce
enough for 5 servings and some leftovers

• 5 blood oranges
• 1/2-1 Tsp sugar
• 2 tsp cornstarch

Put the orange juice and pulp into a small saucepan. Stir in the sugar and the starch and bring to a simmer. Let simmer for a few minutes. Taste and add more sugar if required. I had added too much sugar and tried to rescue things with about a teaspoon of lemon juice. I don’t think that made any difference though.