Somehow or another I had never made rhubarb bread. It seems an odd omission that needed to be rectified. I suspect it's because I usually use rhubarb in baked goods, and I have a preference for warm baked goods straight out of the oven on a Sunday morning, so I skew toward scones and muffins over quick breads, which generally should be allowed to cool.

This recipe comes from a 1979 tome on baking, written in calendar format. It smacks of its hippy-dippy era, with a noticeable bent toward honey, bran and whole grains, and rustic line drawing illustrations. This clearly is not written in the era of relentlessly photographed recipes. The receipt that has been bookmarking the rhubarb recipe all this time dates to 1992 from the Hungry Mind Bookstore in St. Paul, so clearly a vacation souvenir.

The cookbook is also sometimes a tad loose on the recipe end. This one says to divide the dough between two "small to medium size loaf pans." Um?? I've got three bread pan sizes in my house, but it seemed fairly clear from the baking time that they weren't necessarily thinking of the standard size loaf pans. Also not thinking of the miniest of loaf pan sizes. I opted for three of the regular minis but should have gone for four since it overflowed a bit so now I've got a mess on the oven floor. They must have had something else in mind entirely that's lost to the ages and 1970s Vermont.  

Rhubarb bread

From Garden Way Publishing’s “Bread Book: A Baker’s Almanac,” by Ellen Foscue Johnson. Now I just want time off to cook my way through the rest of the year. 

Ingredients

2½ cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ginger
½ cup melted butter, slightly cooled
1 cup honey
½ cup orange juice (or pineapple)
1 beaten egg
1½ cups chopped raw rhubarb
¾ cup chopped nuts

Method

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease four mini bread pans. (See discussion above about size.)

Whisk together flour, baking powder, soda, salt and ginger in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Combine butter, honey, orange juice and egg in a large bowl. Stir in rhubarb and nuts. Stir in dry ingredients until just wet through. Divide among pans and bake. I found the small loaf pans took about 30 minutes until top is springy.

Rating: Delightful. Wonderful flavor and texture; perfectly moist. It comes together quite quickly, so it's a fast fix if you don't count cleaning up the oven if you guess wrong on pan size. Works fine served at room temperature. And now I don't have to go down the hill to get bread for breakfast.

Drink and a nosh: Rhubarb gin and tonic, smoked fish horseradish dill dip

I was looking for more ways to preserve rhubarb for a lingering taste of spring. This puts a splash of spring flavor in a summer drink.

Rhubarb gin and tonic

From “True North Cabin Cookbook” by Stephanie Hansen. This book very much transports you to whatever location you usually call The Lake, whether it's for one week a year, like us, or a family dwelling that seemingly has a built-in homing device, like hers. It has as much of a sense of place as any cookbook that specializes in the cuisine of a particular region. I smell pine and hear loons. 

(The first time we ever heard a loon call was when we were novice campers trying out our cook stove for the first time at Mille Lacs Kathio long before we even moved to Minnesota. It was pouring rain and we seemed to be the only foolhardy campers around, but yet we heard laughter at our inept attempts at lighting the stove, and we really did not appreciate it. Never actually saw that loon. Maybe it was smart enough to be out of the rain.)

Ingredients

2 ounces gin
2 tablespoons rhubarb syrup
Tonic water
Ice

Method

Fill a glass with ice. Add gin, rhubarb syrup and fill with tonic water.

Rhubarb syrup

4 cups chopped rhubarb
1 cup sugar
1 cup water

Method

Combine rhubarb, sugar and water in a heavy large pan. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes or until fruit is soft. Press through a strainer. (The recipe suggests saving the solids for use as a bread spread; it makes a subtle but nice jam on toast.) Chill before using. Makes just shy of 2 cups, so enough for weekend houseguest levels or a small dinner party.

Rating: While technically I didn't need to be in the market for another rhubarb drink, given that the rhubarb martini batch cocktail is heavenly, it's always good to branch out. I was worried this one might be too sweetish, but it actually has some tartness to it. Just really refreshing, and pink! Would definitely not mind pulling that out of the cooler at the cabin. A perfectly viable use of rhubarb that will last past the pick-by-July-4th dictum. Well, if you don't share with others, in which case it won't last that long.

To pair with it, I opted to make another recipe from the same book, both being things that seem northish. Plus we'd brought back a couple kinds of smoked fish from the Fisherman's Daughter on a recent trip north.

Smoked whitefish spread

From “True North Cabin Cookbook"  by Stephanie Hansen

Ingredients

8 ounces smoked whitefish or smoked lake trout (or salmon), skin and bones removed
½ cup cream cheese, softened
¼ cup sour cream
¼ cup Greek yogurt
1 tablespoon prepared horseradish
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon minced red onion
1 tablespoon chopped dill
Juice of ½ lemon
Chopped green onions or chives for garnish

Method

Combine smoked fish, cream cheese, sour cream, yogurt, horseradish, mustard, dill and lemon juice in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until well mixed. Garnish with green onions or chives.

Rating: Fine. Slightly better the next day after the flavors had time to meld. It's pretty mild. If I make it again I might up the horseradish quotient a tad, or more onion, something to kick up the flavor quotient a bit. But if you make it as is, it's perfectly serviceable and won't offend any timid tasters. Would be easy to make in advance for toting to a cabin in the cooler.

To play along: Wesley Stace's "Late Style," a good backgrounder if you're up North looking at a lake view through the lens of relaxation. We saw him open for Loudon Wainwright III on a recent tour and enjoyed it quite a bit.

Yet another rhubarb scone recipe

Did I need another rhubarb scone recipe? Heck, no. I've already tried several, including revisiting a favorite during our recent cabin week. But was I rewarded for trying another rhubarb scone recipe? Hell, yeah.

Rhubarb scones

Adapted from theviewfromgreatisland.com. I ran across this one in my rhubarb Pinterest feed (is it peak Minnesotan to have a rhubarb feed?), but this site has lots of other lovely looking prospects to try as well.

Ingredients

½ cup sugar
2¼ cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons cold butter (1 stick), cut into pieces
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup buttermilk or half and half
1 cup chopped rhubarb

Method

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In the work bowl of a food processor, combine sugar, flour, baking powder and salt. Add butter and pulse until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. (Alternatively, if you don’t have a food processor, you can use a pastry blender or two knives to achieve the same result.) Add vanilla and buttermilk and process briefly until dough just comes together.

Remove to a lightly floured board and knead a few times to fold in rhubarb. Pat out into a circle and cut into 8 triangles or pat into a rectangle and cut into squares. (Or use a fluted biscuit cutter to cut rounds, as the original recipe called for.) Place two inches apart on a baking sheet (they spread quite a bit) and bake for about 20 minutes until just turning golden.

Rating: These are superb. Moist with excellent texture, not overly sweet or overly rhubarby, if that's a thing. They also reheated well. OK, so maybe I didn't need another rhubarb scone recipe, but I may have found a new favorite. It's possibly tied for first. It would be worth trying with the biscuit cut-out method, since it was the prettiness in the picture that led me to try this one in the first place only when it came time to make them I was in a hurry.

Chicken salad with tahini za'atar dressing

Sometimes you have to wrestle with a recipe a bit before you land in a spot that suits you.

This recipe appealed to me on several accounts. For one thing, once the snow recedes, it's chive season in my alley garden until snow falls again, so I'm always happy to find new recipes to use what amounts to a free commodity at my house. Also, I had bought a small jar of za'atar to use in another recipe that, ahem, I have yet to make, so it's a spice purchase guilt that needs to be assuaged. 

What didn't appeal to me about the original recipe was it was designed for a lettuce cup form. I object to it on the grounds of both structural integrity — pretty soon after you start eating them, you're basically looking a deconstructed salad that requires utensils — and it calls for romaine lettuce. I get why they specified that: With its firm ribs it's as good a candidate as any for trying to stand up to being pressed into service as a bread replacement. But while I can eat the leafy parts of romaine without ill effects, the ribs contain the same substance that makes iceberg lettuce crunchy, and me and a small subset of the population nauseous. 

So first I figured I'd just toss it all together like a salad.

Tahini chicken salad

Adapted from Better Homes & Gardens, March 2023. If you want to make the original recipe, buy romaine leaves to serve as lettuce cups. Not finding it on their website to link to, however.

Ingredients

¼ cup tahini
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons za’atar spice mixture
½ teaspoon ground cumin
¼ cup salt
2 cups cooked, shredded chicken
1 cup finely chopped celery
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
Lettuce or other green leaves for lining bowl
1 cup thinly sliced cucumber
1 cup chopped cherry or grape tomatoes

Method

In a small bowl, combine tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, mustard, za’atar, cumin and salt. If tahini is thick, add a bit of water to get desired consistency.

In a medium bowl, mix chicken, celery, chives and enough of the dressing to reach desired consistency. I found it took much of it, but not all of it.

If serving as a salad, place lettuce leaves at the base of a bowl (or plates if you’re plating it instead of passing it). Top with chicken mixture. Top with cucumber and grape tomatoes. Pass extra dressing on the side.

If you’re serving as a wrap or sandwich, spread a thin layer of extra dressing on the wrap or bread. Top with cucumber, tomatoes and lettuce and roll up or top with the second slice of bread.

Rating: That dressing is very tasty and it make a very nice chicken salad dressing base. The cumin and za'atar add a really nice flavor to the tahini dressing. But even with water added it's too sludgy to really play well with the lettuce greens and just turns them to mush.

Take 2: So I tried it again as written above, this time mixing the chicken, celery and chives and placing that on a bed of lettuce with the cucumbers and tomatoes on top. It worked better, and I still really liked that dressing mixed with the chicken. (That dressing could totally work as a veggie dip.)

Take 3: But what I realized is this really wants to be a wrap, just not in lettuce form. or else a sandwich. Otherwise there's just too much disconnect otherwise between the lettuce component and the salad itself. Sure enough, in wrap form, this was a dandy chicken salad sandwich.

Spring salad with savory granola

It's still early in the Minnesota growing season, so I couldn't find any of the prettier varieties of radishes, which would help in the looks department. Guess I'll have to make it again soon.

 

I made this one because I was looking for something to round out the outlines of a spring supper. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about savory granola, but there was only one way to find out.

Little gem and savory granola salad

Adapted just slightly from “Come Hungry: Salads, Meals and Sweets for People Who Live to Eat” by Melissa Ben-Isha“Come Hungry: Salads, Meals and Sweets forPeople Who Live to Eat” by Melissa Ben-Ishay, as published in the Star TribuneStar Tribune. The original recipe called for two small heads of little gem lettuce, but I opted for what looked good at the market, store and volunteers in my garden. I’d say this serves 6-ish, depending on what else you’re serving. Savory granola needs to be made ahead to have time to cool, but it keeps well at room temperature.

Ingredients

6  cups mixed greens such as butter head, mesclun and arugula
2 Persian cucumbers thinly sliced, or six mini snack size, sliced thinly, divided
3 radishes, thinly sliced, divided
1 shallot, thinly sliced, divided
Savory granola for garnish

Dressing:
1 small shallot, finely chopped
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
½ cup olive oil
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon seasoned rice vinegar
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
¼ teaspoon fine sea salt
¼ teaspoon ground pepper

Directions

Place lettuce in a large serving bowl along with most of the cucumbers, radishes and sliced shallots. Toss with the dressing as desired and top with remaining cucumbers, radishes and sliced shallots.

For dressing, mix chopped shallot, mustard, olive oil, lemon juice, vinegary, nutritional yeast, salt and pepper in a small bowl. This makes plenty, so count on having some leftover because the salad doesn’t need all of that to be well coated. You can make it ahead and bring it to room temperature before mixing. It stays pretty well blended.

Savory granola

1 ½ cups rolled oats
½ cup pepitas
½ cup sliced almonds
½ cup puffed quinoa
2 tablespoons sesame seeds
2 egg whites
⅓ cup olive oil
1 tablespoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
¼ cup ground pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

Combine oats, pepitas, almonds, quinoa and sesame seeds in a large bowl.

In a small bowl, mix egg whites, olive oil, garlic powder, oregano, salt and pepper. Pour over oat mixture and toss to coat well. Spread on prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes. Stir, and bake for another 15 minutes or until golden brown and toasted. This makes way, way, way more than you’re going to need to serve as a salad garnish, but you won’t mind. Unless you mind having a shelf-stable inhalable snack in your house.

Rating: It has merit. The salad dressing can be made ahead and holds up well, and the savory granola falls into the category of Uncle Al Sicherman's standard response when asked how he was: "Odd, but likeable." The salad has fairly assertive flavors from the shallots, so if you're in the market for a mild-mannered supporting player, this might not be it. But if you're open to a bit of zestiness, this delivers nicely, and you can mix up the greens/veggies seasonally.

Nit: Puffed quinoa isn't available on the shelves of every grocery store. I grew tired of looking so I puffed my own. If you opt to do so, toast a very small bit at a time in a large shallow pan over medium high heat, shaking the pan as if popping popcorn, for up to a minute or just until it smells nutty. Otherwise you'll end up with something that tastes like burnt old maids in a popcorn bowl. 

Salmon with couscous-carrot-raisin pilaf

 

If a recipe gives you pause, do you give that pause back — as in give it a pass? Sometimes I do, although if the pause is caused by wondering do those flavors really go together, I'm more likely to give it a whirl in hopes of a pleasant aha moment than if I question methodology. In this case, I was wondering if baking couscous in a pan it doesn't specify being greased would actually work. It works just fine for baked rice, so I decided to go ahead with it simply because it looked so easy, and because salmon happened to be on a great sale at Lunds that week.

Salmon with couscous pilaf

Adapted from Martha Stewart Living Everyday Food, March 2005. Serves 2.

Ingredients

½ pound carrots (about 3 medium), peeled, sliced in half lengthwise, and cut into diagonal ⅛-inch pieces
½ cup couscous
¼ cup slivered almonds
¼ cup golden raisins
2 tablespoons fresh cilantro
½ tablespoon olive oil
⅝ cup water
2 salmon fillets, 6 to 8 ounces each
Lemon for serving, optional

Method

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In a small, shallow baking dish (I used an 8-by-10-ish), combine couscous, almonds, raisins, cilantro, olive oil, ⅝ cup water, ¾ teaspoon salt and ⅛ teaspoon pepper.

Place salmon fillets on top of couscous mixture. Season with salt and pepper. Cover with foil and bake for 30 to 35 minutes until salmon is opaque. Plate salmon, fluff couscous mixture and serve along side salmon with lemon wedges.

Rating: This recipe is super fast to make, particularly if you've prepped the carrots ahead, and it tastes just fine. Would I make it again? If you asked me right as I was trying to plate it, I would have given you an emphatic no, because underneath some reasonably fluffable couscous, there's a layer of crunch you can only chip off the pan, which immediately triggers demerits. It diminished my ability to enjoy the dish, knowing that some serious pan clean-up awaited. I always factor clean-up time when considering if a recipe is a fast fix.

But I have to say, that pan wasn't so horrible afterward after a good soak. I used my Dansk enamel Kobenstyle pan that my mother gave me years ago, and much like the Le Creuset pans I sprung for decades ago when I could least afford them, I am always astounded what a soak and some baking soda will do in fairly short order. Still not convinced about the methodology of this recipe given the layer of crunch, but it was a fast prep meal.

Many years after I bought those enamel pans, I learned my mother was very upset with me because I had splurged on cookware instead of buying a proper dining room table for our dining-room-less one-bedroom apartment. We entertained small groups just fine; young, poorly paid journalists are not fussy about tablecloth-covered card tables surrounded by mismatched chairs so long as they're getting treated to decent home-cooked food and free booze. I don't think the dining table we eventually bought qualified as proper in my mother's mind either, since I later realized she really coveted a dark cherry French Provincial style dining set for herself (and by extension coveted it for me, despite that not being my style). Poor honey. She was a good sport all those years with the round oak table my dad bought for $5 at a farm auction while Mother was standing beside him and didn't even realize he was bidding. It was perfectly serviceable with three leaves, just not the bit of formal loveliness she always had in her mind's eye.

I stand by my pans and priorities. But I wish she could have had a table that met her vision.

Is there any moral to all that rambling? Maybe you do you. But if you don't have decent pans, be prepared to order takeout to serve on your beautiful table when you can't get food out of the pan.

Pumpkin soup with maple syrup and five-spice powder

 

While this recipe would make a great fall soup, it did just fine on a day that's rainy and in the 40s. Still in comfort food mode, with a few loaves of real bread rising even now. Because it was that kind of week.

Very simple pumpkin soup

From Bon Appetit ‘s Best Entertaining Recipes compilation. Looks like it dates to August 2004 or so.

Ingredients

2 (15-ounce) cans pumpkin puree
4 cups water
1 cup heavy cream
1 large garlic clove, peeled and pressed
¼ cup maple syrup
4 tablespoons butter, divided
½ teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
4 ounces shiitake mushrooms, sliced

Method

In a large heavy pot, combine pumpkin, water, cream and garlic. Bring mixture to a simmer. Add syrup, 2 tablespoons of butter and the five-spice powder. Simmer another 10 minutes, whisking periodically.

Meanwhile, heat remaining 2 tablespoons butter in a small pan. Cook mushrooms until tender and starting to pick up color. Season soup to taste with salt and pepper. Serve topped with cooked mushrooms for garnish. Serves 6 as a first course.

Rating: This is a lot like pumpkin pie in soup form, so yum. But even if it weren't that tasty, I would make this again just because it's so stinking easy, and very pantry friendly. I used 1 can of pumpkin and one equivalent thereof of pumpkin I'd cooked, pureed and frozen last year. It comes together very quickly with minimal ingredients and dirtying of dishes. It may not be quite as rich tasting as this winter vegetable soup that also uses maple syrup, but if you're looking for a less thick soup for an appetizer, this one would be a decent choice.

If you want to make the soup ahead, just reheat and then finish off by cooking the mushrooms. The soup is fine without the mushrooms, but it does give it a bit of visual interest. If you're among those for whom mushrooms are too slimey, by all means skip them.