Allotments 4 All

I have made jam this year already from frozen fruits, but number one daughter is off school poorly today (she is very dissapointed as she was going for 100% attendance record and this is her first day off since September) and as that meant I couldn't go to the plot or visit one of my other gardens, I thought I would use the rhubarb I harvested yesterday to make rhubarb jelly.  Had an armfull of stems which I washed and roughly chopped and bunged them in a pan with about a pint of water.  This bubbled gently for an hour, then it was passed through a fine nylon sieve.  The liquid was reboiled for about 15 minutes, then measured and a pound of warmed sugar was added to every pint of liquid.  Once the sugar had all dissolved, it was brought up to a rolling boil and it took about 10 minutes to reach setting point (221'f) - do you think I could find my sugar thermometer!  Could I hell!  Fortunately my meat therm worked just fine.  I now have 6 jars of clear peachy pink coloured rhubarb jelly to enjoy this autumn when the bubby is no more!  ;D  Spring is springing all over the place!

I certainly don't need tempting, but may alter the sugar to halfspoon or similar for my diabetic daughter.

Just out of interest, what do you use the jelly for (I envisage it as a sweet accompaniment to meats, or simply taken with bread and butter, as I would crab apply jelly ...

Have you ever tried rhubarb quiche ... I was introduced to it when on holiday in France once, the gite owner's wife produced it, along with wine one warm evening ...

We use it as jam.  The kids don't like the bits!  :-\  I use my medlar jelly and redcurrant jelly with meats and cheese but the others tend to be for crumpets, pancakes, toast or a big dollop in the middle of my rice pudding!  :)

Quote from: Curry on April 25, 2006, 12:52:32
Have you ever tried rhubarb quiche ... I was introduced to it when on holiday in France once, the gite owner's wife produced it, along with wine one warm evening ...

Is it a sweet dish like custard tart? Sounds good :)

Sounds wonderful EJ.  It is great having rhubarb again and I made my first rhubarb crumble of the season on Sunday.  We have forced some of ours for first time and it was fab, so delicately pink and a fresher more gentler flavour. We will definitely be doing it again next year.  My next rhubarb dish will be ice cream as I have some double cream left over from Sunday, so may as well give it a try.   :P :D busy_lizzie

Tora, the rhubarb quiche was not at all sweet, I was a shade apprehensive at first as I had no terms of reference for the dish. However, the tartness of the rhubarb gave it a distinctive and pleasant edge, and it matched the farmhouse made rose wines we were guzzling rather perfectly !!! My french was not up to asking about recipes, but I did manage to compliment the farmer and his wife on the excellent food (and drink).

Bien fait mon vieux! ;)

Pas aussi vieux s'il te plait !  :D

Certainement moins vieux que moi! ;)

Thanks Curry :)

I never knew rhubarb can be used for savory dishes! It's really difficult to imagine what the dish is like (keep imagining a rhubarb & custard tart). :D

...ooh Tora, you've just reminded me!

I have a lovely recipe for rhubarb and custart tart, which I was going to make, along with some of Delia's

rhubarb crumble ice-cream.

Debs :P :P :P

Debs you can't throw words like rhubarb and custard tart, and rhubarb crumble icecream into the conversation without posting the recipes, that would be cruel!  ;D 

By the way, do you still want the pumpkin seeds for Racheal and Sam?

EJ - have made loads of jams and jellies, but this one never. Sounded so good that I had to have a go.
But  :( do you think I could get it to set?
Maybe its something I'm doing wrong, but have never had problems like this before with jam/jelly! Did you leave anything out of your recipe? Help!

Hi Jen, nope, nothing left out, however, after posting the recipe I went down and even once the jelly was cold it was syruppy, so back into the pan it went and back up to a rolling boil and back up to setting temp, and finally it did set - a whole jar less than when I started!  It isn't set like hard jelly, but a softer jelly - but, keeping it in the fridge once opens keeps it much firmer.  Hope that helps.  I guess if you can't get it to set you could reboil it and chuck in a splash of lemon juice, or what I sometimes do is keep the lemon halves after they have been juiced, in the freezer, and I just drop those in whilst boiling the jam and this seems to do the trick.  Let me know how you get on.

Well, I did the lemon juice, I reboiled, I added chopped apple !

Sorry to say I gave up and chucked the lot into a bucket, added yeast and hoping the resulting wine wont be too cloudy!

Curious!  Maybe some bubby is more pectin filled than others?  I have made lots of bubby jam in the past, altho that was the first time I ever made jelly.   Never had a problem with the setting - but just could be my type of rhubarb which Teresa sent me a trillion years ago when I first got my allotment and joined this forum.  Wine huh....sounds interesting!  :P

Quote from: busy_lizzie on April 27, 2006, 17:13:44
Debs you can't throw words like rhubarb and custard tart, and rhubarb crumble icecream into the conversation without posting the recipes, that would be cruel!  ;D 

....and I can recommend both !!

Have just made a double quantity ( 1 just isn't worth making ;D) and it's now sitting patiently in the freezer.

Shall dig out recipes and post them into recipes  :D

...oops, must use quote properly :)

Oh no! was just posting to thank you for the recipe EJ. Printed it off a week or so ago.... did not read the update about it not setting very well for jennym  :-[ hope it sets for me!

I left the pan on the side for a while to cool down before I washed it up and the dregs in the bottom looked like they were setting, I did boil mine for about 20 minutes and did the freezing plate test 4 times before I put it in the jars..... so hopefully it will be OK!

seemed a lot of sugar! I got 3 average sized jars out of "an armful" so guess we have a slightly different idea of an armful   :)

oh no! didn't set! Left it to cool over night. Wish you had checked before you posted the recipe EJ, wasted about 3 hours and loads of rhubarb  :'(