A Spoonful of Sugar

The tart starts off with the oven-poaching of 1kg (untrimmed weight) of the rhubarb. This is the only way to cook rhubarb in my opinion. It preserves the gorgeous colour of the rhubarb and also keeps the shape of each piece intact - I suspect that many a child has been put off rhubarb by being served stewed rhubarb which is generally a rather dubiously coloured puree with stringy bits in it. Anyway, the rhubarb is poached with only the addition of caster sugar (300g sugar to the 1kg rhubarb) - no water! I'm always surprised at how much juice is produced - this batch produced about 500ml of ruby red juice which I reserved to make a glaze for the tart and also to drizzle over greek yogurt. The thoroughly drained rhubarb and juice were chilled overnight.

Making the pastry was equally as simple. I whizzed together the flour, sugar and salt in my food processor and then threw in the cream cheese and butter. Whizzed again until the fats were as amalgamated as they were going to get (I may have slightly overworked the pastry here) and then bound it with about a tablespoon of double cream (much less than the recipe called for). The pastry did look quite unpromising - I could see a few globs of cream cheese but I went with the flow and chilled it down for 20 mins before rolling it out.

Although the pastry did need quite a bit of flour on the worktop to prevent it sticking, it rolled out nicely enough and baked beautifully. I folded the excess pastry over the sides of my tin before baking and this prevented the pastry from shrinking and also gave me some pastry to nibble on (cooks perks!). I let the pastry case cool thoroughly before cutting off the excess pastry and releasing it from the tin. The pastry was crisp and had a definite tang to it from the cream cheese. Jolly nice.

The rest of the filling was prepared just prior to serving. I beat the cream cheese with a whisk until it was softened - with hindsight, I should have used a spatula or wooden spoon. I spent rather a lot of time banging the cream cheese out of the whisk. Once that was reasonably soft, I slowly whisked in the cream and then folded in the sugar and muscat wine. I had a quick taste, and pronounced it to be good before spreading it over the pastry case. I really love muscat - I would have used rum quite happily too, but since I had some muscat open in the fridge I thought I'd use that. Plus, Dave has very odd ideas about alcohol not being good in food, so I thought I'd be kind and use wine rather than spirits.

The glaze was just as easy as the rest of the tart. Just boiling down some of the rhubarb juice until it was syrupy. I wanted it to be more than just syrup though, so I let it go a bit further until it was a garnet coloured caramel. When I poured this over the finished tart it solidified a little and clung appealingly to the rhubarb.

I'm really happy with the way the tart turned out. The lurid pink (nay, Barbie Pink) rhubarb was both sweet and mouth-puckeringly acerbic and this worked really well with the slightly sweet cream below it. The pastry case provided some crunch - I rolled the pastry quite a bit thinner than Nigella to get a biscuity crunch and this was great. I'd happily make it again, but probably not this year. Any rhubarb that I come across is already earmarked for Nigella's Rhubarb Grunt...

Rhubarb Tart - from "How To Be A Domestic Goddess", Nigella Lawson

for the filling
1kg rhubarb (untrimmed weight)
300g caster sugar

for the pastry:
150g plain flour
1 tablespoon caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
85g cold unsalted butter, diced
85g cold cream cheese, diced
2-3 tablespoons cold double cream, to bind

for the cream cheese filling:
200g cream cheese
200ml double cream
2 tablespoons caster sugar
4 tablespoons muscat or rum

for the glaze:
6 tablespoons rhubarb juice, reserved from stewing

1 deep 23cm flan tin or shallow 25cm tin.

Heat the oven to 190C/gas mark 5.
Trim and cut the rhubarb into 2cm pieces, place in a shallow ovenproof dish (I use a Pyrex dish of about 20cmx30cm), pour the sugar over the rhubarb and toss it all together so that the sugar is well dispersed. Cover with foil (don't let the rhubarb touch the foil) and cook for about 45 minutes, or until tender. When you take the rhubar out, slip in a baking sheet. When the rhubarbs cool, strain it and reserve the juice.

Meanwhile, get on with making the pastry. Using a food processor, mix the dry ingredients, then add the butter and cheese and pulse to make a crumbly mixture. Bind with the cream, pulsing sparingly. Let the pastry rest in the fridge for at least 20 minutes before lining your tart tin. After you've rolled the pastry out and lined the tin with it, put it back in the fridge for another 20 minutes.

Remove from the fridge and line with foil. Fill the pastry case with baking beans and put on the shelf in the oven for 15 minutes. Gingerly remove the beans and foil and cook for a further 5 minutes or until it's turning golden -brown and is cooked through. Leave to cool on a wire rack.

When you want to assemble the tart (and you can do the steps above a good day in advance - just keep the pastry case airtight), reduce about 6 tablespoons of the reserved juice to a syrup by boiling it robustly in a small saucepan. Don't leave this unattended as the juices will become thickly syrupy within a matter of minutes.

Soften the cream cheese, then add the cream whipping until it has mixed well and thickened slightly. Take care not to over-beat - this must be voluptuous and undulating. Add the sugar and muscat (which is lovely to drink with the tart) or rum, and stir to a soft marscapone consistency, then fill the pastry case with it. Top with the poached rhubarb, then drizzle over the glaze.

Makes about 8 slices depending upon how much you love rhubarb.