Its the start of the new year

And the start of one of the best seasons in the world…

Rhubarb!

And this episode has lots of references to Rhubarb!

Not only Rhubarb, but I also remember one of the best Chefs in history, yes the late Gary Rhodes.

Hi created so many recipes that brought british cooking into the world of so many amazing restaurants. His recipe book will be graced in my kitchen for the next few weeks!

And if you’d like to join my Bake Club, my 6 week baking course, where you create a new beautiful and delicious Gluten Free cake each week, you can join here and bake your first beautiful cake today!

https://www.glutenfreeangela.com/bakeclub

Transcript
Gluten Free Angela:

This is Angela from Gluten Free, Angela, and this time I'm talking Rhubarb. Rhubarb, Rhubarb, because we're at the beginning of the year in 2023 and what happens at the beginning of the year. Well, If you are a fan from Yorkshire or if you love Yorkshire or from Yorkshire, you'll know that that is a center of the universe when it comes to creating forced and, sorry, growing, forced rhubarb. Now, some people love this and some people don't. I personally love rhubarb and the forced stuff is. I, if you don't know, Yorkshire is fa very, very famous for it. There is a triangle, and within that triangle it's where they create rhubarb and they grow this beautiful rhubarb in the dark. And what happens is it grows very, very quickly looking for the light, and it is light pink and very, very, very, very sweet. It's gorgeous stuff. It really is. And it. Yorkshire is famous for it, so I love rhubarb. Um, the stuff that you buy in the supermarkets, it's just grown normally, and parts of it are greens, parts of it are pink, but that really fresh tasting stuff is the forced stuff. Um, it's a strange word, isn't it? But it means we force it because it's, the way how it's. And, I was looking, I'm still talking about this recipe. Th this, magazine, this food magazine, which is National Geographic Traveler, and this is from Autumn 22. And I was, as I was leafing through this little book, I've got a couple of things to talk about, but there's. There's a couple of things that I just thought, wow, we need to have a conversation about this. And one of the, one of the things that I spotted was rhubarb. Now you will see lots of different things to do with rhubarb. You can just cut it, you can freeze it, you can use it. I, I've got a couple of my go to recipes and. I make a rhubarb and custard cake, which is gorgeous. It really is. And I also love any desserts that are made of rhubarb. and you can also just pair it with a beautiful Panta that you make. Again, you don't need a gluten-free recipe for making Panta because it shouldn't have anything in it that is wheated or gluten related. So look at Pannacotta, look at yogurts. Look at well plain yogurt. You know me by now. I'm, I'm not this, I don't like sugar sweet stuff. I love sweet fruits and things, but, um, I just find that it's the most beautiful accompaniment. Something that's a beautiful cream, a beautiful custard, a fu beautiful egg tasting thing. Beautiful yogurt. and one of my favorite things to do is really quite simple. What I do is I just cut it into about one one inch, one and a half, two inch pieces, and just make sure that you cut off. all of the leaves and the top of it, the leaves are very poisonous, so you don't want the leaves. Okay? And they're not normally sold with the leaves. They may come from farm shops with, um, small leaves, but just cut all of that and put it, throw it away. Throw the bottom of it away because you, you can find that the bottom is, is a little bit brownish. And then just cut. And place it in a dish and we're gonna put it on a really, really low, um, put the oven o oven on low, about 1 30, 1 40. And what I do is I just drizzle a little bit of, I don't know if you have this in your cupboard, but I always do. And you know, the, um, the, um, the ginger. That's in a jar. Well, that's what I use. So I take out a couple of the ginger bulbs, you know, that are all in that lovely syrup, and I cut them, chop them up into tiny little pieces. Honestly, they're about two millimeter square and I just chopped them up two, two like bulbs of the ginger and sprinkle them all over the top of the rhubarb. And then I drizzle a couple of tablespoons of that ginger syrup as well. And it's amazing. And if you've got forced rhubarb, the rhubarb is pretty sweet anyway, so you don't need any additional sweetness to add to it. But this is a recipe that there's no gluten in it, there just isn't. And so it presents itself to you stewed, or Let me, I take, I, I put a, some foil over the top and then I'll peel the foil off and leave it in there for about 20 minutes because there's a little squares of ginger go almost like toffee. And I just find. If you've got a Pannacotta, if you've got a creme air and you put this at the side, just a, a tablespoon of this beautiful forced rhubarb, it's not a compact because you cook it on a low heat. All of those pieces of rhubarb stay, whole. They don't turn to slush like you do when you put 'em in a. or when you put 'em on too high, they're just incredible and the juice comes out of them as well. Now I like that sour hit, but if you want just put a tablespoon of sugar on there. Honestly, try it once and see if you like it. If not, just add a little bit of sugar. Okay. Um, I, uh, the first rhubarb though for me is, is sweet enough. When we get later in the season, yeah, it, you know, we have to put sugar in it, and then I just put a tablespoon of sugar on. That's all I do, uh, before I, I cook it. So, and there's this thing here, this recipe in this mag magazine, and it says, um, so it is, oh, they've got hazelnuts on it. So they've made a little bit of. Got Hazelnuts on it. Butter, orange sugar, egg whites on the bottom. That sounds nice, doesn't it? Then they've got the compote and then they've got cream, and so you can actually buy, or if you make your own granola or things like that, or just, just break up some beautiful biscuits that you've made or that you like, put them in. Put some natural yogurt in, put some cream in, put some of the compote on the top. Honestly, the lists are endless. We don't use rhubarb enough. And then the other thing is, once it gets to a certain time in the year, you should never have rhubarb from, is it after June? Because then the plants need all of their energy to. Continue flowering and then die down and then be really strong for the next season. So I know on the, when I have me allotment, you never took the rhubarb into July onwards. Hmm. Quick sip of tea there, but you can get rhubarb. You can buy it into, I, I bought some at the end of last year, so I have no idea where that came from, but that was from a farm shop, so I don't know where they got it from, but it was really good rhubarb, you know, not like force rhubarb, but it was very pink. It was lovely. And with this, so you've got a beautiful, um, beautiful, um, recipe here. For that Anna's, it says Anna's rhubarb dessert. I dunno if it's on the, on the um, website, but hey ho. Um, looks really nice. Where are they? It looks as if, hang on a minute. They're not in this country. So these people are Olie and Anna and they have. Horse field. So where and earth are they? I'm trying to find out, because I've looked at the recipes, but I've not actually looked so in, they're in the field somewhere on the island of Kuai. Ooh, this looks really nice. And they're, they're doing marinated lamb hearts on the barbecue, you know, when there's a certain. Household that you'd love to go to? Um, I think they are in the Faroes. Wow. Yeah. Cause it says self governing part of Denmark. Um, so they're in the Faroe islands. Oh my word. I didn't realize that you could grow rhubarb out there. Wow, isn't it in the Faroe Islands where there are no trees? Um, I haven't done all of my re research. I need to do more research, but it looks absolutely incredible. So they have got a recipe here for rhubarb. I'm getting even more excited now about the, the Faroe Islands because we have something in common. We have rhubarb, um, and something else that you can. I remember again when I had my allotment. And people can make like a path on your lawn, you can actually set, you can pour concrete into a, in, into a large, round container, and then you can put a huge, huge, huge Rhubarb leaf on the top until it dries. And the imprint of. um, the, the rhubarb leaf, which is huge, they're almost the size of an umbrella, aren't they? Leaves the most incredible impression within that, that. Circle that you are making out of concrete and you can use them as steps and just have a look on Pinterest, et cetera. You will see, um, people who've done that. So I've always wanted to do that. And maybe this is the year that I'm actually gonna do, um, some rhubarb stones, so to speak, a walkway across my lawn. but that's one of those things about rhubarb. And I wanted to say something else about rhubarb. Now, there is a chef who I remember when I was young, I thought was incredible, and I thought he was incredible. Not only because of his haircut, but because I tried one of his recipes that totally blew my mind, and that is the amazing. Gary Rhodes, who unfortunately is no longer with us. However, I wanted to talk about one of the res two of the recipes. I will say, what introduced me to Gary Rhodes, and I remember I went to. A restaurant in Leeds and it was called Brio. And we went to this restaurant and it, we ordered bread and butter pudding. Now, this is 20 odd years ago. I ate, um, gluten at the time. I probably had problems. That's why I was an on antibiotics for nearly 30 years of my life. Um, with the. Reaction. And as soon as I have any gluten, it comes out in my skin straight away as well as all the things. Uh, but hey, so we went to this beautiful restaurant at this Italian restaurant, Brio, and we had bread and butter pudding afterwards, which totally blew my mind. And it was a panton, uh, bread and butter pudding. And if you have not got one of Gary Rhodes', Recipe books yet, you need to get one that has his bread and butter pudding recipe in it, there's um, it, it was just amazing. And we asked for extra custard and we got extra custard with this panton dessert. Now you can buy gluten-free pantos. What do you do with them after Christmas if you haven't eaten them? You can make a beautiful. Bread and butter, gluten-free pudding. What happens if you have scones that are so dry? You can make a beautiful bread and butter pudding. So it doesn't have to be bread in a bread and butter pudding, certainly not in gluten-free world. And a lot of them do recommend that you use something like a scone. Um, so give it a go. But I know this, this recipe book that I have from Gary Rhodes, this was my introduction to his amazing and I mean amazing, recipe. And I think, is this the one that's got bread and butter pudding? Um, No. May. Maybe this one isn't. No, it must be one of his other ones. But the one I picked up is the complete cookery year. Ye, I dunno, the bread and butter pudding. Maybe in here May. I've got quite a few of his, but there is this recipe in here and I don't want you to get too squeamish about what it's using. It's a rabbit and. Pork pot with rhubarb and mustard soured cream. Now something about rhubarb is it cuts through. So, oh, it is delicious. With what can be quite a rich meat. So think about pork if you want to have pork with, and take this. Rhubarb, a mustard soured cream recipe, and the only thing that's in there is force rhubarb, caster, sugar, dijon or, whole grain, mustard, and soured cream. You need to get the book to actually have a look at the recipe. Okay. Um, but it is just incredible. It gives a certain depth of flavor that you, you just didn't think was. And if we look at certain countries as well, certainly if we look at like Denmark, Copenhagen places, you know, Norway, and we have a lot of the, they, they will have bacon joints that they cook and oh, they put them with pickles and rhubarb. Honestly, it's not just. For the sweet stuff. It marries so, so well with, with other things as well. Oh my word. Alright. I'd forgotten all about this. So have a look at this, and I told you what this recipe book was, wasn't I, uh, Gary Rhodes, the complete cookery year, and then when I go a little bit further, There is what has to be one of the best, best, best, best, best recipes of all time. You have to tweak it. You have to replace the plain flour with a gluten-free flour, but it's a champagne rhubarb Clafoutis. Yeah, I'm gonna repeat that again. Champagne rhubarb Clafoutis. So, Forced rhubarb. That's what we use because it is so sweet. And they put on, uh, they say two to three tablespoons of amaretto or Kirsch, honestly, just get loads of alcohol and pour it over. Uh, but this guy, he was just a total, total genius. He took all of those recipes. People used to make years and years and years ago, and he brought them back bigger and better than ever, ever, ever before. Honestly, I just loved his, his recipe books. They were so beautiful to look at, um, and not only to look at, they were just beautiful to eat as well. What on earth is this one? Uh, this, I'm not even gonna oeufs on baked 74 75. Let's have a quick look at that one. I have no idea what this is. Oh, wow. Now can I just say, you know what I was saying earlier about when you actually have the, the rhubarb, think about them caught into four inch pieces. and bake them, as I said, really slowly, um, and cover them as well. And you know, when you make floating islands, which is like a meringue, but it's not a crispy, meringue. Now it does says say with Brioche, and custard and custard, but have the custard have. Um, the floating island type things and just have this forced rhubarb Oh my word. That looks amazing. And that's in April. So you can see in April you're still having, this and what? Oh, I keep looking at different things. Oh, my word. So it's saying the Clte February, of course. when we are looking at, honestly, the, these recipe books, oh my word, slow roast, shoulder of lamb with Jerusalem artichokes, and a horseradish sauce. That sounds amazing. And again, if you know somebody who's got a, an allotment. There will be somebody in that allotment who is overgrown with horseradish and they just dig this stuff up and try and get rid of it. So if you want horseradish, have a word with somebody who's got an allotment because there'll be somebody there trying to get rid of so much of it and fresh horseradish is just incredible. and all of these sort of recipes start to come towards the end of the year because that's when it is amazing to have rhubarb. Um, and I'm just gonna have, we're in, we're in January now, aren't we? So I'm gonna have a quick look and see what we have in January from the amazing, the Late Gary Rhodes. So sweet, sweet potato tortilla. You could make that no is issue whatsoever. Well, there's a broccoli, blue cheese and walnut tart. I've told you before. Just use Sue's pastry and you can do that in no time. Oh, mashed carrot tart with kohnrabi pinenut, and corriander dressing. Again, you can make these no issue. potato, leak and walnut, gratin. And again, you can do that. There's no gluten in that baked kohlrabi with bacon and cheese. Yep. Nothing in that. Oh my word. This sounds amazing. English cabbage plate. Ooh, I've got to have a look at that. A cheese and onion. Jerusalem artichoke gratin. That sounds lovely. There is a little bit of flour. It's only half an ounce of plain flour, so you can easily swap that out. that would be absolutely fine. Um, all grilled pilchards yum. Mock grilled hake. with a blood orange sauce. Of course, January. We've got the blood oranges, haven't we? fillet of gunard with fresh Jerusalem artichoke. Oh wow. Honestly. cod with parsnip sauce. Fresh. Oh, this is my favorite fish of all time. Fresh turbot and avocado and mango salad here is something that just sounds amazing. There's part of it that we just can't have, but braised several orange beef with horseradish dumplings. It's too difficult. Um, we can make our own dumplings, but they're nothing like traditional ones. Oh my word. There are just some incredible, incredible, um, recipe. um, Clementine Dump Plains with passion fruit syrup. Yeah, I do make steamed puddings gluten-free. Um, oh my word, Blood orange almond cake. I think everybody's got one of those recipes, haven't they? Oh, wow. Do you know what you, you don't open a recipe book in years and then when you open it, it's like seeing it for the same time. Uh, all. Oh, wow. Here's another one. I, why don't we have this for Christmas? Bailey's Custard cream with William's wedges. So this is a Bailey's custard cream. You're fine. You can make that, it's got gelatin in it, so just decide which type of gel team to use. And then it's William Pears. Oh wow. This is so good. I'm telling you, I am going to be making so much out of this. This is just incredible. Ooh. Something I can't actually eat anymore because this is something that gives me, I get so sick with it. But, um, I remember loving this stuff. Brown shrimp soup. Oh my word. I, I just used to love those. When we used to go to Ostend, I always used to have the brown shrimps. Love them, but I've eaten them twice now over there, and every time I've got seriously sick with a really bad, migraine, so I think I have an allergy to them, so I probably won't try them again. for quite some time. oh, fried skirt steak with sauteed salsify potatoes. Oh my word. And, and this is what I mean, you know, Gary Rhoads grabbed things. Out of the archives and made them beautiful once again. And in the back of the book was all the basics about salmon, stock, fish stock, different types of stock, how to make bread sauce. If you need a sauce of any description. Um, make sure you are using the, is it on my website? I'll, I'll get it on the website in the next week. Or, But you make your sauce with Cornflour. I know I've mentioned this in one of the previous, podcasts, but we just make it with cornflower and then you can add cheese to put it over like a, a cauliflower cheese. You can add blue cheese if you want a blue cheese sauce. Honestly, any white sauce you need at all. so thi this is, this is just such an exciting, exciting. Book to read. and honestly, I dunno, if you like me, I will. This is what I did when I, when I went gluten free and, and I hated it because a lot of the gluten free books, the recipe books were basics and showing you how to. modify things. So when we go back and we actually pick up a beautiful, beautiful, cookery book, we realize all we have to do is swap. If it's only half an ounce or an ounce of flour, you can swap that for a normal gluten-free flour and it will work. honestly, just give things a go. I do you know what, this book is staying out for the next couple of weeks. I'm going to be making so many recipes out of this and, and I just thought let's celebrate I have had this recipe book, I dunno how long the, the pages in the cover is, are turning brown. Uh, let's have a quick look. Ooh, so this is, it's say in 2003. So this is about 20 years old. Bless him. Gary Rhodes in my mind, one of the best, best chefs we've ever seen because he took old fashioned recipes and make them new and delicious once again. So this is to Gary Rhodes. Absolutely love that guy. it is such a shame he's no longer with us, such a shame. But if you have any of his recipe books, open them, read them, get immersed and love every single recipe that he created for us. so that's a little bit. You know what we can do a little bit about rhubarb recipes, what's out there and Gary Rhodes, what an inspiration. He, he, his recipes are just legendary. I love them. So anyway, with that, I am going to get off. Thank you so much for spending the last half an hour with me and, uh, I really, really look forward to speaking to you again soon. This is 2023 and this is the year that we shouldn't worry about what we need to create. What we need to do is look and think, right, how do I swap this, right? I need a pastry. There's a, there's a decent. Pastry there that I can get. It's already made. I can just start to use that, start that way with pastry and honestly, that Sue's pastry is lovely. Some of the more commercial stuff, I just leave I don't touch, I don't like the taste is okay. It's just the texture, but. I, I use that one. You use whatever you like, but do not be afraid of making sausage rolls. Of making a pie of anything. And when you see something like in a coffee tea, it's just needing half an ounce of flour. Swap it. It may not be exactly the same, but you know what? You're still gonna make her beautiful, beautiful clafoutis, so I cannot wait. I'm gonna be going up to Leeds in the next few days, and I cannot wait to get to Tomlinson's Farm Shop in Pudsey. For some forced rhubarb because they are one of the powerhouses, in that Yorkshire triangle of growing beautiful force rhubarb. And I will be getting some of that and making the most delicious Clafoutis and, uh, enjoying every single delicious mouthful. So you take care. I will see you again soon. This is Angela from Gluten-Free, Angela. Hope you enjoyed it. I have loved spending time with you. You take care. See you soon. Bye.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *