Rhubarb fool

As I alluded to in my last post we had a very productive trip to the local farmers market yesterday. I met the very lovely Tim Kinnaird from MasterChef 2010 who had a stall selling his gorgeous macarons (I can thoroughly recommend the salted caramel), bought some amazing local sausages and chilli jam and came home with a beautiful bunch of rhubarb.

We had friends over for lunch today so I wracked my brains to come up with something which would complement the chicken with chilli, tomatoes and bacon that I was cooking for a main course. In my head I knew what I wanted to cook but I couldn't find a recipe which fitted just right. So, I made it up taking only the roasted rhubarb part from the most recent Waitrose magazine. I served this with vanilla shortbread to mix up the textures a bit.

Rhubarb fool with honey roast rhubarb
serves 6

1kg rhubarb washed, trimmed and cut into finger length pieces
50g caster sugar
50ml water
juice of 1 orange
seeds from 1 vanilla pod
3-4 tbsp runny honey or to taste
300ml double cream
125g mascarpone
1-2 tbsp icing sugar or to taste

Put half the rhubarb in a single layer in a roasting tin. Add the honey, orange juice and 1/2 the vanilla seeds
Loosely cover with foil and roast at 160C for 40 minutes until tends but keeping its shape
Put the other half of the rhubarb in a saucepan with the caster sugar and water. Cook until mushy - you need this well cooked as it is going to be folded through the cream.
Put the stewed rhubarb in a sieve and strain off the syrup - keep this to one side.
Leave both lots of rhubarb to cool
Whip the cream and fold through the mascarpone, rest of the vanilla and add sifted icing sugar to taste
Carefully ripple through the stewed rhubarb adding some of the syrup to loosen if needed
Pile into serving glasses and top with the roasted rhubarb.
Serve with crunchy biscuits