Rhubarb? Really?

Don't get me wrong - I have no intention of churning my own butter and I won't be trading my freezer for an icehouse, but there's something very romantic about simple, old fashioned food you've grown or created yourself.  Finding new ways to use basics and creating dishes with just a few ingredients so the "exotics" are minimal can come off as ordinary but then again, what's so wrong with ordinary if it's better than mass produced, boxed blah?  What was ordinary 100 years ago has become romantic, even exotic.  Even my favorite food network chefs are going back - either recreating the old with a modern flair - or just recreating the old - just served up as it was "wayback".  I've learned about ramps and rhubarb - considering an onion patch and feeding the growing mound of compost (or what my husband calls the stink that's on *@#!)  Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution painstakingly points out how far our generation has come from the earth -  painfully illustrating how much our kids don't know.  I watch his show "Jamie at Home" religiously because everything he cooks harkens back to a simpler age of pure ingredients and basic cookware.  There's nary a fancy word (except for letting the peas "pucker') or piece of cookware I don't already have.  His food jumps off the screen - or at least I wish it would - right onto my plate.  No fuss, no muss - just unbelievable goodness.  He's even proven to me that I can drink from my garden which in my last blog I considered impossible.  A rhubarb martini sounds like something my grandmother would have sipped - and made from leftovers no less!  I'll post the recipe below so come summer when we have all harvested our own rhubarb we can enjoy a little drinky dink together.

500g rhubarb, trimmed and chopped
• 100g sugar
juice of ½ an orange
• 2 shots of vodka
• ½ a shot of Galliano
• ½ a shot of double cream
• ½ a shot of milk
• a handful of ice cubes

Place the rhubarb, sugar and orange juice in a small pan and put the lid on. Simmer for a couple of minutes, then remove the lid and simmer for a few minutes more until you get a thick, compote consistency. Pour the rhubarb into a sieve over a bowl and let the liquid drip through. It’s this liquid you want (the rhubarb left in the sieve is lovely served with some custard).

Put the vodka, Galliano, cream, milk, ice cubes and 2 shots of the rhubarb liquid into a cocktail shaker and shake it about. Strain into two cocktail glasses.