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Rhubarb Bread Pudding

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I have learned to trust Jerri’s judgements about recipes. Not that I always follow her recommendations, but sometimes I like to live a little recklessly and once in a while, my intuition proves right.

Like me, Jerri hates to throw away food, so she was as interested as I in Jane Marsh Dieckmann’s Use it All: The Leftovers Cook Book where I found the recipe for calabacitas last month. Jerri put a bookmark at the the page for this recipe and suggested I try it.

I did and we both liked it. The rhubarb and lemon juice flavor the rather bland sweetness of the bread and custard and the custard smooths the taste of the rhubarb. If you like either rhubarb or bread pudding, chances are good that you will enjoy it too, especially if it’s warm and topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups diced rhubarb
1/2 cup plus 2 T sugar
2 cups dried bread cubes
1/2 to 1 T lemon zest
1 1/2 T lemon juice
1 cup milk
1 large egg

PROCEDURE:

Clean and chop the rhubarb into a quarter to half-inch dice. Cut the dried bread into half-inch cubes. Wash and grate the yellow zest from a lemon and squeeze the juice from the fruit.

Preheat the oven to 375º and grease a one to one and a half-quart casserole or soufflé dish. Put a pan with an inch of hot water into the oven.

Mix the rhubarb and bread cubes in a large bowl. Stir in the sugar and lemon zest, then dribble the lemon juice over the mixture and mix everything thoroughly.

In a smaller bowl, beat the egg until it is lemon yellow, add the milk and beat them together. Pour the milk over the rhubarb and bread mixture and stir it well. Put the pudding into the casserole and smooth the top with a spatula.

Carefully set the casserole into the pan of hot water and bake the pudding for about an hour and fifteen minutes. Check for doneness with a knife inserted near the center of the pudding. It should come out nearly clean.

NOTES: Dieckmann’s recipe calls for only a half-cup of sugar, but we thought that the pudding was a little too tart. Feel free to try it with just a half cup and adjust the sugar the next time you make the pudding if you agree with us.

Jerri thought that the lemon zest overpowered the flavor of the rhubarb. “I like the flavor of rhubarb,” says she, so I adjusted the recipe to give you the choice of using less zest.

Whole milk works best for making custards and puddings. If you have only reduced fat milk in the refrigerator but do have some cream or half and half, add a couple of tablespoons of either to the cup before you fill it with milk.

Butch’s Kraut-Stuffed Hamburgers

Butch Wardenga was a year behind me in high school, but he ended up a few years ahead of me in cooking and sharing his recipes. While I left Hayward and ended up working for a company in the Twin Cities, Butch stayed in the Hayward area and ended up with his own home caretaking business.

While there are these obvious differences in our lives, we both had mothers who were good cooks, we share a love of good food and we like cooking for other people. Butch published a collection of his recipes in a book he titled Care Taker’s Cookbook. I write “Courage in the Kitchen.”

One of my sisters and her husband gave me a copy of Care Taker’s Cookbook for my birthday this year, and several recipes caught my eye. I talked with Butch on the phone and have his permission to share some of those recipes on this blog. The first one I tried was “Kraut-Stuffed Hamburgers.”

They tasted just as good as I thought they would. Frying the kraut with bacon and onion creates a mild filling for the hamburgers that is a perfect complement for the meat. You really should try it, even if you think that you don’t like sauerkraut.

INGREDIENTS:

2 lb. ground beef
1 medium onion (2 1/2 inches)
5 slices bacon (about 1/4 lb.)
3 cups sauerkraut
Salt and pepper
Flour
3 T olive oil

PROCEDURE:

Cut the bacon into quarter inch pieces and fry them over moderate heat until they are crisp in a large skillet. Peel and chop the onion into a quarter-inch dice. Add the onions to the bacon and sauté until they are translucent and tender. Stir a dash of salt and a quarter teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper into the bacon and onion.

Stir the drained sauerkraut into the mixture and fry until it turns golden brown.

To form the hamburgers, take about a quarter cup of meat and press it into a patty about five inches in diameter. Put one or two teaspoons of the sauerkraut mixture on one half of the patty and fold the other half over the top. Seal the edges.

Heat about three tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan. Dredge the patties in flour and fry them until they are well done. If you are cooking for a group, keep the hamburgers warm in a roaster.

NOTES: I made half a batch to produce four good-sized burgers. Instead of folding the meat over the filling, I made two thin patties, put filling on the bottom one and sealed the top patty to the bottom.

Be careful with the salt, since sauerkraut is often quite salty. Diners can always salt their burger at the table.

If you want a copy of Butch’s cookbook, you can buy it the next time you are in Hayward or on line from Hayward Mercantile Company.