When life gives you ruhbarb?
Just kidding, life didn’t give me rhubarb, my garden did. Mid autumn, I harvested 4 stalks, so precious, well, anything you grow your own kind of is. And so, I put some good thoughts into how to make the best out of it. The tanginess of rhubarb would go well with some rich deep gooey chocolate, I reckon.
Back to the rhubarb, the plan was to experiment with textures. So I poached them with full bodied red wine to make soft juicy bites, mixed the luscious sauce into the meringue for a silky crunch, and candied a few ribbons to create a sharp contrast to the chocolate ganache. Didn’t sound so bad did it?
Dylan was extremely helpful kitchen hand (when he’s not wriggling), held on to the spatula for me and passed it when I needed, with a bit of negotiation of course, it was not like he would let go of it so easy anyway.
Really focus he was, making sure I didn’t over beat the meringue and all.
Quality controlling the result with his devoted team. Make it rain baby! (Side question: how many Totoros are there?)
It was a lot of fun preparing all the elements. I wanted to turn the candied rhubarb into curls for a final bit of flair. But when you are trying to do fiddly work like this with a 4 month old, sometimes you have to concede to remain sane. The rhubarb stayed dried in the oven for longer than it should be so I couldn’t curl them up anymore, but in the end, they worked better as wafers than curls, ha!
Brought it over to visit a relative for the first time, Dylan and this tart sure did make an impression. I was in a hurry assembling it and packing Dylan’s nappy bag pretty much at the same time, lucky I didn’t put anything from nappy bag up on here. Not this time anyway.
Finally we get to sit down and taste it. Pretty freaking scrumptious, we all came to that conclusion. A few things I realized though.
While the chocolate ganache was damn delish (can’t go wrong with salted caramel and 80% dark chocolate really), I could have mixed some of that rhubarb sauce into the ganache, all thing rhubarb, you know. And it was a little difficult to cut into fair pieces with this decoration, and everyone wanted a bit of everything.
Fortunately, back at home, left over elements were enough to assemble a few smaller tarts so I played around and finally happy with this version. One thing though, looking at this now, it feels like, the reverse of trypophobia which I highly recommend you to NOT google image it (if you have not already know it), haha!
This out of focus photo wouldn’t do justice and neither this bite is photogenic but hey, try imagine this: first you bite into the crunchy meringue that melts right away, then you reach that gooey chocolate ganache, then you’re drowned in that juicy tangy poached rhubarb but you’re safe because the chocolate crust is there for you to hold on to. Now combine all 4 layers in your head and tell me if your taste buds start tingling yet.
At the end of the day, it was a very rewarding little project when you grow your own produce (some of that), try to make the best out of it, have fun experimenting (with your baby boy) and share the result with your family. And better yet, blog it when you can squeeze in a few minutes!