Rhubarb Recovery

In renouncing the twin pleasures and pains of refined sugar, I thought that I may never eat rhubarb again. It is bitter.

Well, I have managed so far with another compote recipe to add to the one I have already shared.

In fact, I may go as far as to say that I was a chicken and will bump up the rhubarb quantity next time- the less you have sugar, the sweeter things become. I have found the same with salt- my friends often find my food not salty enough, but I now find theirs, often, too salty.

When I made this, I used 28 small pears, peeled and quartered -I imagine that would be about 4kg- and 5 stalks of rhubarb. I think that I could easily have bumped this up to twice the amount of rhubarb, getting more of the rhubarb flavour without making the compote too bitter.

I shoved the rhubarb in a large pot with a thumb-sized piece of diced ginger, a heaped teaspoonful of cinnanom  (should have been more, but I finished the pot), the pears (I could have used apples) and an inch of water at the bottom.

After two or three hours of slow cooking the rhubarb had broken down, mixing completely into the pear juice around the larger pieces of pear. Verdict in my flat from everyone who had been queueing for it to become cool enough to eat (including from the one who didn't wait that long and burnt her tongue in the process)- delicious.

Happy :)