SPRINGING FOR RHUBARB
On a recent trip to Vienna, Austria, a city I lived in for a short time, I was reminded that hospitality is never out of season and that rhubarb is spring's harbinger.
Last week, I was on a plane bound for the U.S. after spending two weeks in Europe. I flew home from Vienna where I visited a friend, a friend I met when I lived there from March 2018-September 2019. In addition to taking in a couple of museums, having lunch at Öfferl, Vienna’s premier bread bakery, and getting to know the neighborhood my friend recently moved into, we attended a vegetable cooking class at The Old School Guesthouse in Schlossberg, Austria, in southern Styria, a region known for its wine, forested hills, hiking, and thermal spas.
Proprietors Oliver and Petra Lucas live on the ground floor of The Old School, so when you stay there you are truly a guest in their home. The entire house, with six guest rooms, is immediately welcoming, mostly because Petra and Oliver are themselves warm, welcoming folks. Before opening The Old School, they owned and operated the restaurant ‘grace’ in Vienna’s fourth district. Prior to that, Oliver was the Sous Chef at the Michelin starred Steirereck, also in Vienna. The couple met in London in 2006 while both worked at the Four Seasons Hotel.
Over the course of the cooking weekend I learned a few things about vegetables and cooking and myself. Here’s some of what I learned:
-The German word for a silicone spatula is gummihund.
-I am a textbook introvert.
-Breakfast is without a doubt my favorite meal of the day. It’s when I’m hungriest. It’s also the time of day when my brain cells are mostly in gear, when good things seem like a possibility, like dreams really could come true before the meal is over.
-A multi-course breakfast, cooked by a Michelin starred chef is a damn good start to the day. I am now a firm believer that the only thing better than breakfast is a multi-course breakfast.
- To paraphrase Chef Ollie, cooking vegetables is all about enhancing their flavor so that they taste more like themselves. This is an overarching statement, one that could apply to many facets of life, not just vegetable cookery.
Chef Ollie is right of course. Just think about it. What would you rather eat? A boiled parsnip? Or a caramelized parsnip set into a puff pastry galette filled with onion cream, topped with pesto and charred baby gem lettuce? The contest my friends is not even close.
-Beurre noisette, garlic flavored oil, homemade mayonnaise, and vegetable stocks made using the peels from the vegetables we cooked with, are all prime examples of flavor enhancers. The Old School Guesthouse maintains their own kitchen garden and greenhouse so whatever didn’t go into the stock pot went into the compost bin.
-Having Frank the Dachshund in the kitchen was the best. Though to be clear, he shouldn’t be confused with a gummihund.
-Cooking is hands down one of the things I enjoy doing most in life.
Since I’ve been home, I’ve been inspired not only by what I learned at The Old School but by what I ate at The Old School. Our dessert the first night was a strawberry rhubarb tart topped with a dome of meringue.
If you don’t already know, I am a rhubarb devotee. I’ve written about rhubarb before, crave rhubarb when it’s not in season which is most of the year. I look forward to spring rhubarb as much as I look forward to tulips blooming. The other day I bought a new lipstick at the drugstore (Milani Peony) which is an exact color match to rhubarb. Why they named it Peony and not Rhubarb is beyond me. Anyway, in the past I’ve had trouble finding rhubarb even when it’s in season. Luckily, it seems to be readily available this year. I decided to make a strawberry rhubarb sauce to enjoy with Greek yogurt for a breakfast starter, a total riff on one of the breakfast courses served at The Old School. This weekend I plan to swirl some into muffin batter. There should still be plenty left to turn into a barbecue sauce which will pair nicely with pork tenderloin cooked on the grill.
The recipe below makes about 5 cups, 800g, of strawberry rhubarb sauce. I decided to use frozen strawberries since their season is just beginning which means they are not at peak flavor.
STRAWBERRY RHUBARB SAUCE
Ingredients:
2 pounds/500g fresh rhubarb
5 oz/125ml water
10 oz/283g frozen strawberries
2/3 cup/80g granulated sugar
2 tablespoons/50g honey
Instructions:
Zest and juice from one navel orange
Defrost strawberries before using and cut in half.
Rinse rhubarb and cut into small pieces, roughly the same size as the cut strawberries.
Place cut fruit in a non-reactive saucepan. Add water, sugar, honey, and zest and juice from the orange.
Set saucepan over medium high heat and stir to combine.
When mixture begins to bubble, turn heat down to medium-low.
Cook at the heat for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Do not let mixture boil.
Once the fruit has lost its shape and the mixture looks cohesive, turn off the heat.
Let the strawberry-rhubarb sauce cool in the saucepan and give it a stir every 10 minutes or so.
Once cool, transfer sauce to a container and place in refrigerator. Use within one week.
It is so fun to read about our shared experience through your eyes and unique perspective. It was such a memorable experience, only I'll never forget, and I can't imagine having done it with anyone but YOU. And I really need to be using "Gummihund" more often as part of my regular vocabulary; thanks for reminding me!