Ginger-Rhubarb Compote

Often the first vegetable to pop up in the spring, rhubarb is one of my favorites. 

While I love it in pie my new favorite way of using rhubarb is making compote.  Compote is french for "mixture" and is basically just a stewed fruit dish.  Rhubarb makes a beautiful compote. 

Compote is also a great way to prepare rhubarb for canning so it can be enjoyed in the winter.  The version I am making is sweet but a savory variety is fabulous with roast pork.

Ingredients

1 cup rhubarb - diced finely and freshly picked from your garden if possible!
1/2 cup sugar (to taste)
1/4 cup liquid - water is fine, a clear juice would work as well
1 tbsp ginger - diced finely
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 vanilla bean pod - scraped out is fine (see notes below)

Directions

1. Rhubarb leaves are poisonous so they should be removed and discarded as you pick it.  The rhubarb stalks should then be washed well to remove any dirt, oil/grease and diced finely.  The easiest way to dice rhubarb is to split it several times lengthwise (depending on the thickness of the stalk) and then to cut across the lengths.
2. Add diced rhubarb to a non-reactive pot (it's quite acidic) and then add your sugar, liquid, ginger, cinnamon and vanilla bean pod.  Everything can be adjusted according to taste.  The liquid facilitates the cooking down and softening of the rhubarb so add more if your compote seems to be drying out.  As it cooks down, taste your compote.  Add more sugar if you feel it needs it.  I tend to like my food not-too-sweet so make sure the compote tastes good according to your tastes.
3. Once the compote is cooked down, remove the vanilla bean.  The compote is now ready for eating or for canning.

Uses

• I chilled my compote and then ate it over dark chocolate pudding and it was outstanding.  It would also be wonderful over mousse.
• A rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream topped with a scoop of warm compote could possibly make your guests swoon or your family insist that you make rhubarb compote every day.
• I also love compote on porridge in the morning!  Some diced apple would make it extra wonderful.

Notes

• Many recipes call for the tiny seeds inside the vanilla pod but don't use the pod itself.  Well there is only so much vanilla sugar a person can make.  This recipe is great to extract all the flavour out of your leftover vanilla pod.
• A vanilla bean is the fruit of an orchid.  I think it is the most sensual spice.
• To make the rhubarb compote savory just start thinking like a chutney.  Chunks of lemon peel (preserved works), garlic, thyme, black pepper, coriander seed...  You get the idea.  With chutney I like the texture to be a bit chunkier so I would add some large dice apples at the end and cook them long enough to soften but not disintegrate.

References

Rhubarb

Thank Yous!

• To my girlfriend Marla with her wonderful partner Leevon and their new baby Joni for the delicious rhubarb from their garden in Courtney, BC. 

Nature saving her seeds

Part of my food exploration journey is growing my own vegetables.  One aspect of veggie farming that I want to explore is seed saving.  My inspiration for seed saving comes from Wangari Maatai.  She was a Kenyan woman who started the Green Belt Movement in 1977.  Several years ago I watched a documentary called Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maatai.  It discusses why she started the Green Belt Movement and the challenges she faced.  To call this movie inspirational is an understatement.  It turned me into a sobbing mess.

One of the movies unforgettable messages is that rather than teach women how to plant trees, Maatai taught women how to grow and then plant trees.  She did not want them purchasing trees from a grower, because this was not true independence.  Saving seeds falls into this vein.  When people don't know how to save their own seed, they are forced into relationships with companies like Monsanto, who breed their seeds into sterility.  A sterile seed is a horribly perfect symbol of our modern industrial diet - growing market share and profit at the expense of life.

The natural world though is hard to stifle.  My recent experience in my little garden proves this at least anecdotally.  I was out on my deck doing an early spring clean-up when I came upon some bean pods from last year.  I plucked them off the vine even though they looked rough.  In the kitchen I pulled the pods apart.  Some of the beans were moldy and I threw them out, but several looked good and like they could possibly be planted.  Was it possible, I wondered, that these little beans survived the wet and cold Vancouver winter with their ability to grow still intact?

I planted the seeds and three weeks later, beautiful little beans started emerging from the soil.  I'm excited to plant these peat pots in my veggie garden and watch them grow.

While I am planning on purposefully saving seeds in the future, this experience shows that when mother nature is left to her own devices she is remarkably resilient.

Grandmummy with a Pick Axe

I went over to my cousin's new place the other day to help get her yard in order.  I arrived and walked around back to where the family was gathered.  There was my Grandmummy with a giant shovel turning over the soil in the veggie-garden-to-be, while my two cousins-in-law (men in their 30's) were sanding a bannister.  Hilarious!  I don't know how she got assigned shoveling duty but there it was.  So I jumped in with her and then insisted we snap a pic.  Please note that I am 5'8" so she is rather on the small side.

We shovel for several hours and then she decides that the size of the rocks really requires a pick axe.  A pick axe!  I inquired as to whether or not she is a miner and then decide that I need a video clip of her using her pick axe.

I would also like to mention that the thing was heavy.  She lost it momentarily and sent me scurrying around the yard to find it for her and when I found it I did think to myself: This pick axe is freakin' heavy.  I would get tired using it!

As Mother's Day approaches, I just want to say: Grandmummy, you rock!  You give all of the women in our family an ambitious example of life in the later years and I only hope I can live up to it and be an equally ambitious example for my grandkids.

Perhaps I will take up chain sawing in my 90's?

Peeing in the Garden

For those who think I'm straying from food, I'm not.  The subject of this post is vegetable gardening or more specifically preparing your soil to grow gorgeous and plentiful veggies.  A workshop was put on by Can You Dig It! a local organization that supports people in connecting through community gardens.  I was there to learn about soil because I take care of a large veggie garden with two of my Aunties.  Last year was not as successful as we would have liked so this year we are putting more time and effort into learning and preparation.

The workshop was hosted by Jodi Peters.  She is certified in permaculture and passionate about creating living soil systems that support growing a wide variety of vegetables.  While I recommend contacting her for an in-depth workshop, I wanted to share a few tid bits.  As someone who has gardened since childhood, I thought I knew about soil.  Well I am happy to say that Jodi taught me a thing or two and I am anxious to get dirty.  Oh spring!  Come sooner!

A few interesting points:

• Soil doesn't need to be tilled if it is healthy.  What?  No back breaking shoveling?  Sounds good to me.  Think of soil as a webbed system.  If you chuck a shovel in, the system breaks - not a good thing.
• Excess disturbs the delicate balance of the soil living system.  This can be excess fertilizers, excess shoveling, excess mulch, excess anything...  My understanding is that it is better to coax the soil back into balance than try to force it.
• Soil should be mulched with brown matter over winter and green matter during the growing season.  Mulching is way more important than I realized.
• Your own pee is a great way to add nitrogen to the soil.  Dilute it and maybe only use it weekly if your soil system is healthy, but yeah, pee is good for your garden.  Hilarious!  I peed in my garden the moment I got home!

Honestly there was so much more.  It was a packed two hours and I could tell that she was really just scratching the surface of soil health.  I am going to use my blog to document our garden success this year and, as I found out today, it all starts with the soil.  Here is a current shot with just a few onions poking up that survived the winter.