The first one was last night. It was quite pleasant -  a congenial group – one of my “girls” – a young woman who lived at the co-op dorm where I was the head cook from 1981-1986, when she was 18, and I was 26 – and she brought a long another woman who is wondering if she should keep trying to make it as an artist, maybe get an MFA, or pursue some other graduate degree; a young guy on his own, who turned out to have grown up in Manhattan, across the street from my upstairs renter’s boyfriend; one of my oldest friends; a group of four who’d never been there before – so lots of pleasant conversation.

The menu was:
Pan Bagnat – salad Nicoise in a sandwich – crusty bread stuffed with tuna, tomatoes, cucumbers, and olives – with a no-tuna option for vegetarians (that turned out to be pesto, goat cheese & tomato
Salt & vinegar potato salad
Coleslaw
Rhubarb mousse served with butter cookies

There was a little too much food – a lot of sandwich, only a dab of coleslaw, and a vat of mousse leftover. I had some of the sandwiches  for dinner tonight, and mousse earlier today for second breakfast.

Saveur Rhubarb Custard Pie

Saveur Rhubarb Custard Pie

Saveur Rhubarb Custard Pie

And speaking of rhubarb … This was a pretty good batch of muffins – I felt I had perfected my rhubarb muffin recipe. I have good luck with rhubarb & cake, and rhubarb and crumble – like rhubarb crisp, and even rhubarb pie – but think I am just going to have to give up on rhubarb and custard. This time of year I always get enchanted with rhubarb custard tarts and they never come out as well as other rhubarb preparations.

Last year, I featured rhubarb custard tart as part of a spring cooking class. I liked a recipe fron the restaurant at the UK National gallery, and I even bought a flan ring, especially for making it. It came out looking almost exactly like the picture, except it didn’t brown – the reason being, that even though I had macerated the rhubarb in sugar as the recipe instructed, I forgot to add the rest of the sugar to the custard.

Last night I tried out this recipe from Saveur. I just had a piece for breakfast. Again, pretty good, but even though I pre-baked the crust, it’s a little underdone on the bottom.  The custard is good – I like the technique of mixing the rhubarb-sugar-juice back into the custard, instead of not, as in the Brit recipe – although I was thinking of trying to re-create the rhubarb syrup with vanilla and gin cocktail I had at Fifteen, when we were in London (it was a special that night, and not on the regular drinks list)  the using the excess rhubarb juice. The rhubarb got cooked through – but the texture of the two together are not quite right – smooth custard and squishy rhubarb = NOT a match made in heaven.

In fact, the best combination of rhubarb and cream that I can think of is trifle with rhubarb pureé, layered in with the cake crumbs and custard … er, no, make that rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream … or warm rhubarb crumble with ice cream … hmm, thought I just had breakfast.

And Portfolio Slideshow works way better than any of the rhubarb custard tart recipes I’ve tried. <grin> In fact, I think it can do what I’ve not been able to make my other image gallery do (the function that comes with the theme I am using) do – insert another picture into the same post, that’s not in the gallery. er well, I guess they’re in the slideshow, but they show up as block images too.

Saveur Rhubarb Custard Pie

Saveur Rhubarb Custard Pie

Saveur Rhubarb Custard Pie