Sweet and sour rhubarb cheesecake.

May 10, 2016
2 min read

Working as a yacht chef sometimes you come across treasured ingredients you haven’t seen in years, I stumbled upon a very small stand in a local outdoor market near Antibes France where I now call home, and to my joy he had 8 stalks of ruby red rhubarb. Immediately I paid the gentleman for all the rhubarb he had and rushed off to my galley to prepare lunch.

As often happens on yachts the guests requested a slightly earlier lunch and I suddenly felt the pressure to crack on.

I had already that morning on my return to the yacht thinly sliced two of the stalks of Rhubarb and poached them lightly in a sugar and vanilla syrup for a few minuets and left them to cool and also made my cheese cake mix and baked ready for later.

Keeping back a little of the sugar and vanilla syrup to dress the plate just before serving.

Later that morning I returned to my cheese cake to complete the dish, I made a rough crumble topping with rolled oats, almonds, flour, butter, and brown sugar then baked until golden brown, while cooking down 4 of the other stalks with just a little natural cane sugar, essence of orange blossom, a touch of honey and half a vanilla pod, as I wanted this half of the dish to be slightly tort and sour on the tongue.

My dish was almost complete.

Once I had wrapped my cheese cake quenelle in a slice of the cold sweet pouched rhubarb I then mixed the warm sour rhubarb and the cold sweet strips of rhubarb together on the plate, topping with sprinkles of the crumble topping and a little of the vanilla and sugar syrup to dress the plate.

The whole experience is a sweet and sour dessert with a gentile remainder of home.