Rhubarb Crisp for Summer Dessert

Summer is time for fruit, flowers and favorite foods. I just learned that one of our favorite foods isn't a fruit like I thought, but a vegetable! I thought the tomato was the sole claim of that confusion. I used to tell the kids in the nutrition classes I taught that if we were talking horticulture it was a fruit, and if we were talking food it was a vegetable. Rhubarb is just the opposite, a vegetable that is mostly eaten as a fruit in pies, cobblers, and often paired with strawberries. Maybe it's tartness and need for lots of sugar is what pushes it into the fruit dessert category. 
Rhubarb stalks look like red celery with large leaves. Just remember the leaves are poisonous, so only harvest the stalks. A friend gave me about 20 stalks recently, just right for rhubarb cobbler. Here's my favorite recipe that could use fresh or frozen rhubarb. 

RHUBARB CRISP

Ingredients:

6 cups rhubarb (can add blueberries to make it to 6 cups)

3 tablespoons flour

2/3 cup sugar

½ teaspoon cinnamon

Topping: 

¾ cup rolled oats

¾ cup brown sugar, packed

6 tablespoons flour

½ teaspoon cinnamon

6 tablespoons butter

Instructions: 

1.    Preheat oven to 375 degrees. 

2.    Wash and rinse rhubarb and cut into 1/2” pieces.

3.    Toss rhubarb with flour, sugar, and cinnamon. Place in a 2qt. baking dish. 

4.    In a separate bowl, combine topping ingredients with a fork or pastry blender. Sprinkle over rhubarb mixture. 

5.    Bake for 35 minutes or until rhubarb is tender and topping is golden. 

6.    Cool 5-10 minutes before serving. Top with ice cream, cream, or vanilla yogurt. 

chopped rhubarb and blueberries with sugar, flour,
 and cinnamon. Ready for topping. 

With topping, ready for baking. 

The Not-So-Common Cabbage

This is one week's half-share of the local CSA.
One head of red cabbage and one of green. 

Cabbage - not a fancy veggie. Something I buy cabbage a few times in the winter when lettuce isn't very good (or too expensive) for salads. Cabbage makes good coleslaw. Anything else? Well, when our weekly selection of produce from our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) included cabbage for a few weeks, I needed new ideas!

A search came up with a couple that seemed suited for summer meals. And with a thought to next winter I also froze some for soups. Besides coleslaw, I do like cabbage in vegetable soup. Freezing cabbage doesn't sound like it would be too successful since it does have a high water content and freezing would make the cell walls break down resulting in a limp, not crisp, product. But for soup it is cooked to a tender and limp state, so freezing seems like a possibility. I cut the cabbage into small wedges, leaving a bit of the core in each to hold it together. Then blanched the wedges in boiling water for 90 seconds followed by 90 seconds in ice water. After draining the wedges I packed them into a freezer plastic bag for the freezer. We'll look forward to that addition to hardy soups next winter.

The new recipes I tried that we liked were Baked Cabbage and Cabbage Rolls. Baked Cabbage sounded unusual and strange - but surprisingly it is very good. I changed both recipes to shorter baking times, I found with really fresh and tender vegetables the baking time can be reduced. Cooking with veggies is more of an art of what works and what you like, not like the science of baking where careful measurements and times are more critical. So sometimes I take the recipe as a 'suggestion'.

Cabbage wedges ready to be baked.

Baked Cabbage: Cut into wedges and put on an oiled roasting pan. Drizzle with olive oil (I use a basting brush to spread the oil in the bottom of the pan then over the top of the cabbage). Sprinkle with salt and pepper and brush with olive oil. Lay cut bacon pieces (uncooked) on top of the cabbage. Drizzle with a little melted butter. Roast at 450 degrees, covered with foil for 15-20 minutes. Uncover and roast until the cabbage is golden brown and tender. The original recipe instructed a total of 60 minutes of roasting time. With fresh cabbage, ours was tender and even crunchy at the edges in about 30 minutes. You won't believe how good this is! (Could be the olive oil, bacon, and butter!)

Baked - crispy and a little too brown! 

Cabbage rolls ready for baking

Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

I adapted a recipe from thekitchenwhisperer.net to make a smaller amount and shortened the baking time.
Cabbage leaves - I pulled large leaves off the outside and cooked 10. You could cook the whole head (remove core first). Cook in boiling water for 3 minutes until leaves are softened. Cut away the thick center stem from each leaf without cutting all the way through.
Meat mixture - this is basically a meat loaf mixture.
       1 ½ pound ground beef (or 1 pound ground beef + ½ pound ground pork)
       1 medium onion, chopped fine, or 1 Tablespoon minced dried onion
       3 tsp. minced garlic
        1 tsp. kosher salt
       ¾ tsp. ground black pepper
        1 tsp. parsley flakes
        1 large egg
        ¼ cup ketchup
         about ⅓ can tomato soup (use the rest of the can to pour over the rolls)
Mix all ingredients together.
To assemble cabbage rolls: Lay a leaf down with the cut edge facing you (where the stem was) and place about ½ cup meat mixture in the middle. Fold the edges over the meat and roll the cabbage up like a burrito. Repeat until all the leaves are stuffed. If you have extra meat just roll it up as meatballs and place it in the baking pan with the stuffed cabbage. Pour the rest of the can of tomato soup over the cabbage rolls.
Bake covered for about 1 hour, until the internal temperature of the cabbage roll/meat is 165 degrees and the cabbage is tender.

Eating local - roasted carrots, beets, and potatoes from CSA,
tossed salad with radishes from CSA, cabbage rolls - cabbage
from CSA and beef from our ranch. 

I even found a quote about cabbage I like. From Mark Twain, "Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education." Humble as the cabbage may be, it can be tasty in a variety of ways.