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Perfect Rhubarb Jelly
I am an absolute freak for rhubarb. If I see those gleaming red stalks in a grocery store or someone’s garden, if I spy a piece of rhubarb pie in a bakery display case, if I even see the word “rhubarb” on a printed page, I start drooling as helplessly as one of Pavlov’s mutts.
As you might imagine, I also collect rhubarb recipes: CHOW’s Rhubarb-Almond Bars and rhubarb-laced Knockout Punch are in my regular rotation. But it’s tough to find a good recipe for one of my rhubarb staples: rhubarb jelly. Commercially made rhubarb jelly is all but nonexistent; if a jelly company uses rhubarb at all, it’s always combined with strawberry. I’m happy to make my own, but most rhubarb jelly recipes also invite in the insidious strawberry.
The rhubarb jelly recipe from the ’wichcraft cookbook, however, is just about perfect. Lots of rhubarb. Lots of sugar. Just a little bit of lemon. The recipe is for refrigerator jelly, meaning you have to use it all up or it goes bad in a couple of weeks, but I don’t see why you couldn’t can it to have it around during the no-rhubarb months.
The only downside is the time the recipes takes, since the rhubarb has to macerate overnight with the sugar and lemon. Funny that, since the recipe is part of a larger recipe on making a PBJ. Do you know many people who want to take two days to make a PBJ? Yeah, me neither.
By the way, if you too are a rhubarb freak, just about anything you’d want to know about the vegetable (yes!), from growing to cooking to medicinal uses, can be found at the Rhubarb Compendium.
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Tagged with: rhubarb, spring ingredients, jelly, food and cooking
Jurassic Cake
If you haven’t read the web comic Daisy Owl, it’s worth a look—it’s a sweet, tightly written, bracingly funny series following the adventures of a bear, an owl, and the owl’s two presumably adopted human children.
A recent strip features the presentation of a dinosaur birthday cake with the following introduction: “A dinosaur cake could be anything. Even a plain, circular, vanilla cake. You see, all biological matter is recycled. A percentage of the atoms in everything organic were dinosaurs at one point, including this cake, and even ourselves. So, in the truest sense, this is a dinosaur cake.”
Read the strip for the twist, of course.
Image source: flickr member Peat Bakke under Creative Commons
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Tagged with: media, cake, daisy owl, dinosaur, comic
Friendly New Barbecue Spot In Oakland
Reviews of newish barbecue joint Taste of Joy are starting to come in. Word is it’s “affordable and low-key” with a “super-friendly” chef/owner, though still working out a few “new restaurant growing pains.” Here’s the Chowhound take on some of the key offerings.
Brisket: “It may not have been the moistest or most nuanced BBQ I’ve ever had,” says abstractpoet, “but it was damned tasty, comforting food—the meat was flavorful and the sauce was addictive.” Cassia adds that it’s “not like other brisket I’ve had but super-yummy.” It was thinly sliced, like roast beef, slathered with a “yummy” sauce, and was less chewy than usual.
Ribs: “The BBQ sauce was delicious,” says Cassia. “Kansas City style: tomato-based with molasses, so a touch sweet. just a little heat … The spare ribs were smoky and meaty and with a good chew, benefiting from 5 hours in the smoker (according to the chef/owner), but not fall-off-the-bone tender.”
Hot Links: “Perfectly cooked, not dry at all. Not very spicy, but flavorful,” says abstractpoet.
Sides: The potato salad has a “perfect all-American flavor” even if the texture was “a bit too like smashed potatoes,” says Cassia. The mac ’n’ cheese is made with “perfectly al dente pasta tossed in (but not drowning in) a nice cheesy sauce, with extra cheddar melted on top,” says Cassia. abstractpoet liked the greens “even if they didn’t have much ‘punch’ to them—really felt like you were tasting the flavor of the mustard greens instead of just vinegar like you get at a lot of places.”
Taste of Joy [East Bay]
3227-A Lakeshore Avenue, Oakland
510-627-0067
Board Link: “Taste of Joy:” new BBQ and gumbo joint on Lakeshore (Oakland)
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Tagged with: san francisco bay area, restaurants and bars, taste of joy, barbecue, bbq, barbeque
Shopping Bags for the Long Haul
Baggu landed on the reusable bag scene a while ago, but now it has expanded its offerings to include new sizes (baby and big), a handy grocery kit (five bags in a little drawstring sack), and a nylon mesh produce bag, which you can use in place of those clear plastic bags from the store.
Check out Cool Hunting’s video on them here:
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Tagged with: products, baggu, reusable, grocery bags, plastic bags
Korean-ish Whole Fried Chicken (and Wings!)
Next time you’re jonesing for fried chicken, it might be worth calling Mr. Yao at China Village in Albany for a chat. Melanie Wong got a whole fried organic chicken there, served with “just a spicy salt with Sichuan peppercorns on the side” for $25. She was told that, next time, “we should call ahead and give a few hours’ notice for time to marinate the bird, as this one had all the seasoning in the coating only. He also told us that he can make the Korean-style wings with spicy garlic sauce (kam pong gi), but only when he’s around as he prepares it himself.”
China Village [East Bay]
1335 Solano Avenue, Albany
510-525-2285
Board Link: Korean-ish Fried Chicken at China Village (Albany)
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Tagged with: san francisco bay area, restaurants and bars, china village, fried chicken, korean
Breathe In Your Booze
Why drink your booze when you can don a hazmat suit and stand around breathing in gin fumes? That’s the question London bar/art installation Alcoholic Architecture asks. Open only for two three-day sessions (one last week and one lasting through Saturday), the bar is a project of prankish British design firm Bompas & Parr, known for its custom-molded bespoke jellies and “flavour tripping” parties at which participants consume miracle fruit.
Apparently, standing in the stinky mist for 40 minutes is about the equivalent of one drink. But I agree with Dlisted, which snarks: “Now, do you get to drink gin as well as breathe it in? ... After 20 minutes of not getting drunk by breathing in booze vapors, I’d sniff out the source and stick my mouth on the damn mister. 40 minutes sober in a bar feels like ten lifetimes to a drunk!”
This video, by ITN’s This Is Genius, will tell you more, but be warned: You’ll really want to punch the guy who says, “Hence, ‘Alcoholic Architecture,’” with an astonishingly smug expression.
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Tagged with: wine and drinks, alcoholic architecture, bompas & parr, bompas and parr
