Rosy Rhubarb Tart

Rhubarb in the UK is the first big spring crop, but the good news is new varieties have been bred that go on into the autumn. Rhubarb makes some of the most delicious fruit desserts, one of the best parts of British cooking. It is the fruit that needs cooking but beware as it can easily turn to mush. For a plain bowl of rhubarb for breakfast, I put pieces in a frying pan with sugar syrup, boil gently for 2 minutes and then switch it off and let it cool. This way, the rhubarb both stays whole and is cooked.

My Rosy Rhubarb Tart is a hybrid, taking visual inspiration from those beautiful French tarts glistening in the windows of French patisseries. The tart also draws on other food cultures, using coconut cream and nuts to form the base on which to sit the rhubarb as the classical French base is not vegan friendly with its dairy cream and eggs.

An important add on for rhubarb for me is ginger. I like the soft taste and the texture of preserved not fresh or ground ginger in desserts, although a little ground ginger does work well.

The purpose of the coconut base is taste, but, most importantly, the coconut paste forms a barrier to stop the rhubarb juices from soaking into the pastry. This way, you don't end up with a soggy bottomed tart. After all, who wants to eat something akin to flavoured blotting paper. I recommend you don't put raw rhubarb in direct contact with the pastry.

Frozen puff pastry sheets make the pastry part of the recipe simple enough. Although I was taught to make puff pastry, I find the bought ready rolled version works well and saves so much time.

As I'm a sucker for shiny things, I do like a glaze to give the fruit bit of glamour and oomph. For red or pinkish fruit, use redcurrant jelly melted in water and brushed on, and for yellow or light coloured fruit, apricot jam minus the big bits of fruit, again melted in water. This is an optional step.

Ingredients

Serves 8-10
Special Equipment: Food Processor

3tbs icing sugar

2/3 balls of preserved ginger, very finely chopped/optional

1kg rhubarb

320g sheet of ready rolled vegan puff pastry

2tbs redcurrant jelly + 3tbsp water/optional

200g coconut cream

100g unsalted pistachios

50g ground or whole almonds

1/2 tsp ground cardamon

1tbs vanilla paste

Method

Put the nuts and the cardamom in a food processor and blitz till ground up with the coconut cream, vanilla paste and icing sugar. Blend until you have a stiff mixture.
Put the coconut mix in a bowl and stir through the tiny pieces of preserved ginger.
Take the rhubarb and trim the top and the bottom ends. Cut each stem on the diagonal into the same sized pieces. Mine are approx 5cms in length. Put to one side in a bowl.
Set the oven to 190C fan/210C/435F.
Put the sheet of puff pastry on a baking tray lined with Bakewell paper.
Finely mark out a line (don't cut right through) 2cm in from the edge of your puff pastry to form a kind of picture frame. The plan is to leave the edge completely clear so that it can puff up.
Take the coconut mix and carefully spread it inside the frame, leaving the outside edge naked.
Now the fun begins. You can design a pattern of your own with the rhubarb sticks. Here I've taken a simple approach and have three rows of rhubarb batons. Take care to use rhubarb of similar thickness if you can so that the fruit cooks evenly.
Once the pattern is to your liking, put the tart in the oven for 30/40 minutes. Check what the tart looks like through the oven door every so often to see it's not burning (if it is, switch the oven down).
The pastry edge should look golden brown, and the rhubarb should be holding its shape but.… You want a balance between a soggy bottom (undercooked) and a burnt tart (overcooked), And of course, you want soft rhubarb, and the stalks do vary in terms of the time they need to soften.
Once your tart is cooked and out of the oven, melt the redcurrant jelly in a small saucepan with 3tbs water on a low heat. Give it a good beating with a wooden spoon until it's smooth.
With a pastry brush, gently brush the melted jelly onto the rhubarb until it glistens.
Eat the lot while it's still warm with dollops of yoghurt or with vanilla or ginger ice cream.