Sunday, 29 April 2007

Rhubarb Jelly

rhubarb jelly
No baking this week. There's only room for a certain amount of 'junk food', and we've still got two chocolate eggs to get through. There's also some of the last two batches of cookies (the banana oatmeal raisin and carrot cake ones) in the freezer. for reference, both seem to freeze fairly well. Defrost for an hour or so at room temperature. They may benefit from a short time in a lowish oven, but I haven't tried that.
So, I didn't bake, but I still wanted to make something. So what should I do instead? Our garden contains three clumps of rhubarb. Two are pretty small, but the third is producing quite a lot. So obviously something with that. Some kind of dessert, but something fairly light. I still have some gelatine in my cupboard from the first time I ever tried to use it. That attempt was a success, so why not try again? Rhubarb jelly it was. I went looking for recipes as a starting point, and settled on this one from BBC Good Food. I left out the alcohol, as I don't have any, and reduced the amount of sugar. I have a bottle of rosehip syrup in the cupboard, and thought that might go quite well, so a teaspoon of that made its way in. I don't think it really came through in the finished jelly, but I'd have to make another batch without it in order to find out. Which I just might do.

Recipe (makes 2):
250 grams rhubarb, sliced
200 millilitres water
35 grams caster sugar (40g if not using the syrup)
1 teaspoon rosehip syrup (optional)
2 sheets leaf gelatin (enough to set 300ml liquid)

Soak gelatine in water while rhubarb is cooking.
Put rhubarb, sugar and water in a pan. Bring to the boil and simmer for about 15 minutes. The rhubarb should completely disintegrate.
Remove from the heat.
Pour the mixture through a fine sieve into a jug, gently pressing on the solids to extract most of the juice. You can either discard the solids left in the sieve, or put a couple of teaspoonfuls into the bottom of the jelly glasses and discard the rest. Taste and see.
Pour the liquid back into the pan. Add the rosehip syrup and the gelatine to the pan and stir until the gelatine is fully dissolved.
Pour the jelly into glasses and chill until set.

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