My Recipe Novella - Pressurized Rhubarb in the Instant Pot
It’s a thing, you know. These days, when you look up a recipe on the interwebs, you don’t just get a straight up recipe with just the facts ma’am tablespoons and cooking temperatures.
Now the recipe is like the climax after paragraphs about grandmothers and prairies. There is talk about heading out to a well-tended garden on rainy days. After sniffing the fragrance of a good simple life, the recipe author will gracefully kneel to clip perky stalks of nostalgic vegetables sprouted from the pink hearts of homemade whole grain bread baked with love in shiny retro appliances covered with artfully arranged Hello Kitty stickers.
Also there are a lot of ads for Pottery Barn for Kids and photos that make you want to paint your kitchen butter yellow and make yourself an apron out of gingham.
 |
| Rhubarb dessert |
I love moss-covered table decorations as much as the next gal, and so I became inspired. May I present to you my first, and probably last, Recipe Novella:
I went out in my ancient slippers to pick up the CSA box. I threw all the vegetables in the fridge. Then I ignored them for about a week, until everything became somewhat flaccid and clearly on the way out.
This is when I normally snap into action.
I extracted everything from the fridge and besides the easily identifiable kale and turnips and romaine hearts, I found some long red celery looking things. I smelled them and cut them in half, but still had no clue what they were. I had a mystery produce item on my hands.
 |
| Mystery Blood Celery |
Aha! I remembered there is a photocopied sheet that comes in every CSA box listing everything included. I fished it out of the recycling bin and by process of elimination identified the stalks as Rhubarb.
 |
| I should have moved the sheet from the counter before I started washing things |
I do not have a treasured box of family recipes. Both my grandmas were somewhat questionable in the kitchen department. No worries, the google found this narrative about stewing Rhubarb including a decent backstory and plot line:
 |
| These photos seem a lot nicer than mine. |
It looked amazing and such cute rubber boots. I couldn’t be bothered with the whole stove part of the operation so I just threw all the ingredients in the Instant Pot, guessed at the timing (8 minutes?) and hoped for the best. And when I say “all the ingredients” I mean all the ones I happened to have on hand.
My Pressurized Rhubarb turned out pretty well. Good enough to add to my smoothie. I could barely taste it.
Comments