To round out the busy week, I chose to make the one more lemonade recipe from the month of August. I know, another lemonade, but this one at least had one thing going for it that the others didn’t: rhubarb. Yes, rhubarb. I’ve never cooked anything with rhubarb. In fact, I’ve never even touched rhubarb, and the only reason I know what it even looks like was that I once saw it for sale at a local farm. So, when I decided early in the day to make this lemonade (mostly because I knew how busy the day was going to be), I went to the farm to buy it (for anyone local—Depiero’s).
The lemonade preparation was a bit different than the others. In this one, I had to cut up the strawberries and the rhubarb, boil them in a water and sugar mixture, and then simmer for 5 minutes. My only uncertainty came when the recipe didn’t say how small to cut the rhubarb, as it actually called for “frozen rhubarb” (which would probably have been more difficult to find than the fresh), and the frozen would already have been cut. So, I threw caution to the wind and cut it into 1 inches pieces. I was actually surprised by how similar rhubarb looked to celery, although it smelled nothing like it.
As the fruit mixture cooked, I was pleasantly surprised by the aroma coming from the pot—it was sweet and tangy, almost like candy. Once the mixture had finished cooking, I pressed it through a sieve into the pitcher containing 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice, and placed it in the freezer for about 30 minutes to cool. Which it didn’t, so I served it over ice. Personally, I liked this lemonade, but my children did not. My daughter, in fact, thought it tasted like medicine, and actually gagged a little while drinking it—an over-exaggeration if you ask me.
The verdict? I won’t be making this lemonade again, but I definitely will make something else with rhubarb. Let’s hope that there’s another recipe in the next 344 days of Cooking Light.
365 Days of Cooking Light 