Flavors that Spring Eternal

My next foray into Juliette Spertus's Learning to Eat Locally yielded three successful and popular dishes, which means I'll be sure to revisit this work again as the seasons unfold.  I can be unforgiving if a cookbook fails to deliver the goods, but this one's a keeper.

The sparkling flavors of rhubarb and ginger star in two recipes, while classic spring veggies -peas and lettuce (or in my case, spinach) - take center stage in the main course salad.  Try 'em, you'll like 'em!

Rhubarb Ginger Chutney
Total Time: 45 minutes
Yield: 1 1/2 cups

1 2/3 c. rhubarb, cut in 1/2 inch pieces
1/2 c. brown sugar, packed
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 c. white wine vinegar (I used a combination of champagne and white vinegar.)
1/2 tbs. grated fresh ginger (Poetic license:  minced!)
juice and pulp from 1 lemon or 2 tbs. lemon juice (Just juice was easier.)
1/4 tsp. lemon rind, minced (Used one of my fav kitchen gadgets, a microplane.)
5 dried apricots, sliced

Put rhubarb pieces, sugar, salt, vinegar, ginger and half of the lemon juice into a small heavy saucepan.  Stew the mixture over medium heat, stirring frequently, until rhubarb begins to steam.  Reduce heat to low and cook until rhubarb pieces begin to fall apart, about 10 minutes.  Add the rest of the lemon juice, lemon rind and apricots. Continue to stew the mixture, stirring frequently until chutney has thickened to the consistency of a jam, about 30 minutes.

Why, oh why, don't I make chutney more often?  It's the concentrated essence of fruit, made sweet and tart at the same time.  Talk about punch!  In other words, this chutney was unbelievably flavorful, studded by pieces of fruit, unobtrusive in their tenderness, held in a suspension of silken, spicy sauce.  Delightful!  A perfect foil for crispy, slightly salty rice crackers.  Highly recommended.

A note about the directions:  Given that my apricots were stiff enough to just about require a chain saw to parse them, I threw them in at the beginning of the recipe for additional cook time and while I was at it, put all the lemon juice in at once.  The chutney was none the worse for my deviation.  I love it when I get away with something!

Cracked Wheat and Couscous Salad on Beautiful Lettuce (In my case, beautiful spinach.)
Total Time:  45 minutes
Yield:  8 servings 

Lime Ginger Dressing: 
1/2 c. lime juice
1/3 c. olive oil (I used a scant 1/3 c. and substituted some water.)
1 1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1 1/2 tsp. grated fresh ginger (Sorry, minced again!)
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp. ground ginger, or to taste
freshly ground pepper to taste
salt to taste (add salt after salad is tossed with dressing - capers are salty)

1 c. bulghur (cracked wheat)
1/2 c. walnuts
1 c. couscous (I usually have whole wheat on hand, but used white this time.)
1 c. peas (fresh or frozen) (Frozen for me.)
1/2 c. chopped fresh parsley, packed
1/3 c. red onion, minced
3 whole scallions, sliced
1/4 c. capers, drained
3/4 c. raisins
1 fresh lettuce with large rounded leaves (green, red, bibb and butter lettuces are nice)
(I substituted spinach, which is one of the first greens to be harvested in spring.)

In a small bowl, combine all dressing ingredients and mix well.  Set aside.

Rinse bulghur well and drain.  Put bulghur in a medium saucepan and add plenty of water (at least 2 cups). Boil until bulghur is tender and chewy, 10 to 15 minutes.  Drain, rinse with cold water, and drain again.  Set aside.

Place walnuts on a tray and toast in a preheated 350 degree oven or toaster oven until walnuts produce a toasted-nut aroma and begin to brown, 5 to 8 minutes.  Set aside to cool.
In a small bowl, pour 1 cup boiling water over couscous and cover with a plate for 5 minutes.  Set aside.


If peas are fresh, boil until bright green and just tender, about 3 minutes.  If frozen, place in strainer under hot running water to thaw.

Empty bulghur and couscous into a large bowl.  Use a fork to fluff grains together. Chop walnuts.  Add chopped walnuts, peas, parsley, red onion , sliced scalllions, capers and raisins to grains.  Pour Lime Ginger Dressing over salad and toss. Serve each portion on top of a large lettuce leaf.


Have I told you how much I love cumin?  This bold salad spoke to my cumin-adoring heart, and most certainly did not disappoint!  Earthily cumin scented, yes, and much more:  a wild ride of disparate textures - chewy, crunchy, pop-in-your mouth - and across the board flavors - sweet, savory, spicy, punctuated by salty bursts of capers.  Juliette, your salad is a gypsy caravan of the colorful and unexpected, thrown together capriciously, with such good results.  Bravo!

A note about the directions:  my recipe for tabouli tells me to cover bulghur with boiling water and let rest for 30 minutes.  A lot easier than rinse, drain, boil, drain, and rinse, and the end product is identically chewy yet tender. 

Rhubarb Carrot Cake
Total Time:  1 hour
Yield: two 9-inch layers

2 c. rhubarb, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 c. brown sugar, packed
1 1/2 c. unbleached all-purpose flour (I used 1/2 whole wheat pastry flour.)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 eggs (I used Ener-g egg replacer.)
2/3 vegetable oil (I substituted 1/2 applesauce.)
2 tsp. vanilla
3 medium carrots, grated (about 1 1/2 c.)
3/4 c. unsweetened shredded coconut
3/4 c. raisins (optional) (Love 'em, used 'em.)
1 batch Lemon Neufchatel Frosting


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease two 9 inch pans, lining bottoms with parchment paper; or grease one 10 inch Bundt pan.


In a medium saucepan, stir together 1/4 c. of the brown sugar and rhubarb pieces. Simmer over medium heat until rhubarb is just tender, 3 minutes.  Remove rhubarb mixture from heat and set aside.


In a large bowl, mix together flour, salt, soda, cinnamon and remaining brown sugar.  In a smaller bowl, beat eggs and mix in oil and vanilla. Add combined liquids to flour mixture and stir to make a very thick battter.  Stir in carrots, rhubarb, coconut and raisins and spread batter into pans.


In 9-inch pans, bake cakes for 20 to 25 minutes, or until sides pull away from pan and a knife inserted comes out clean.  In a Bundt pan, cook for 40 minutes. Bring a knife around edges of pans and allow cakes to cool in their pans for 10 minutes.  Invert on cooling racks and allow to cool completely before frosting


Lemon Neufchatel Frosting
Total Time: 5 minutes
Yield:  enough for a 2 layer cake


1 tsp. vanilla
8 ounces Neufchatel cheese or cream cheese (I use soy cream cheese, which is delish, trust me.)
1 tsp. lemon zest (optional) (Lemon zest is my friend.  I use it always.)
1/2 c. sugar or 1/3 c. honey (Confectioner's sugar for me.)
2 to 4 tbs. lemon juice


In a medium bowl, combine vanilla, cheese, and lemon zest.  Using a whisk or an electric beater, whip until smooth. Set. aside.


Pour lemon juice into a small bowl, using 2 tbs. for a spreadable frosting and 4 tbs. for a glaze.  Slowly add sugar to lemon juice, stirring to dissolve and tasting periodically to check sweetness.  Pour sugared lemon juice over cheese mixture and blend well.  Adjust sugar and lemon juice as needed.  The frosting  is just right when it tastes lemony and not too sweet.

I have a confession to make.  I have never made a carrot cake in all my years of baking.  Perhaps my reluctance has something to do with my wedding cake, which I ordered from a hippie bakery.  The "fresh flowers" which were supposed to festoon the (you guessed it) carrot cake turned out to be dusty weeds from the parking lot.  Even if they had been roses from the White House garden, not much could have helped the general profile of the cake, which resembled closely the doomed U.S.S. Monitor, gun turrets and all.  Oh, dear.

So baking this carrot cake was therapeutic.  Besides, it's not just carrot cake, it's rhubarb carrot cake, which somehow divorced this confection from its distant cousin, the dreaded wedding carrot cake. Hey, at least that stolid mass went down in family history.  Well, as I was saying, I conquered my psychological problem with orange-flecked cakes and WOW, was it a happy turn of events for me not only head-wise, but in a gustatory way as well.  Sweet, of course, yet not cloying thanks to tart rhubarb, rather dense, as a (non-military) carrot cake should be, and pleasantly chewy with raisins and coconut.  Bingo!  I've been cured!

I have to admit to going rogue with the frosting, doing my own thing.  Perhaps I should have followed the directions, because my naughty version was much sweeter than lemony.  I suffer from an incurable sweet tooth, so I didn't find my minor "failure" a hindrance to enjoying this luscious, moist cake.  Many stars!

A note on presentation:  I toasted and chopped walnuts to garnish the top of the cake.  I chose the 9 inch layer cake option, which took just about exactly 25 minutes to bake to perfection.  Juliette's times, both for making and baking, are very accurate, which is a great boon!