rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb

I had a huge hit Sunday night with this rhubarb and mascarpone tart - here's how:
Whip 250g mascarpone (or any kind of creamy cheesey thing, I guess) with a tablespoonful of vanilla sugar, put it in a pre-baked, cooled pie shell, and put stewed fruit on top. Easy-peasy.

Especially if you have stewed rhubarb sitting around from your failed attempt at rhubarb jelly (see previous rhubarb post). I mixed some of the non-gelled jelly into the mascarpone, but I don't think it made a huge difference one way or another.

The pastry was a recipe from a friend called Eithne - 175g flour, 40g icing sugar, pinch of salt, 75g butter, 1 egg. Blitz dry ingredients and butter briefly in the magimix, then add the egg and 1 or 2 tablespoons of water and mix even more briefly. Wrap the resulting ball of pastry in clingfilm (actually, it was more like bread crumbs, but I squodged it together) in the fridge for at least half an hour, roll out and bake at 200degrees, Gas mark 6, for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown. This fits a pie dish 25cm across (10 inches or so).

The clever trick with the pastry that I learned this week was not to trim it around the edges until after it has been cooked. This means you don't have to deal with it shrinking.

For anyone still following the saga of the St Patrick's party menu, the rhubarb mascarpone tart is now the official pudding.

I promise I will track down a camera before Friday AND learn to post photographs to the blog!