Mmmm, fleshy petioles....

I love rhubarb. I've loved rhubarb since I was a wee Stephanie who used to sit at our kitchen table every spring, dipping the end of a stalk from our backyard rhubarb patch in a little dish of sugar, gnawing on it, dipping again, and working my way up. I was utterly fascinated — still am, really, if I take the time to think about it — by the fact that the very same plant is both poisonous and delicious. My adult self loves the very strict seasonality of it, that it's not really popular enough for anyone to bother making it available year-round, and so its scarcity makes me appreciate it more fully. I also love the flavor; even more than a sweet or salt tooth, I have a pretty serious taste for all things tart and sour. I even like it raw, a few thin slices to whet my appetite if I'm chopping some up for another purpose.

Michelle and I had a bit of a get-out-of-my-head moment last week when she emailed to say that she was thinking about infusing some vodka with rhubarb and I had been thinking about the same thing. I didn't have any vodka at home and wasn't going to be anywhere where I could get the really cheap stuff — plastic jug and all — and I found this recipe for rhubarb syrup that I thought would be nice to have on hand for mixing with seltzer or making whatever the rhubarb equivalent of a kir royale is.

Also, it really couldn't be easier: boil some rhubarb with sugar and water for 20 minutes, then strain.
The solids that are left behind after straining were a little flat-tasting, I thought, though a splash of vanilla and the juice of half a lemon fixed that easily enough. You could use it anywhere you'd use jam or fruit butter, but I can't really imagine doing anything but pairing it with the rest of the ricotta ice cream in my freezer, because HOLY HAMMER OF THOR THIS WAS GOOD.
I haven't tried the syrup in anything yet (no seltzer in the house last night), so I can't really say anything about it other than it's super sweet and I'd probably halve the sugar next time, but look how gorgeous it is:

Fun with math

+

=

Best to-do list ever.

A little ambitious, sure.

I knew I was going to be spending most of the weekend inside, working on a freelance editing project, and that I wouldn't have much time to do anything else, but I cooking actually works really well with this kind of project. I need to get up regularly to stretch and make sure I'm focusing my eyes on things that are more than 18" in front of my face, so checking on something in the oven or mixing up a quick batch of proto-ice cream is the perfect thing to get me out of the chair. Plus, I wanted to make sure I had plenty of good things to eat to make up for working all weekend.

The ricotta ice cream came about because of a conversation with some friends over Michelle's outstanding homemade strawberry ice cream. We were talking about our favorite places in the city to get ice cream (fwiw, Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory and Il Laboratorio del Gelato are mine) and I mentioned that I had heard about a combination dry cleaners/gelato place in Bensonhurst that was supposed to be amazing. It turned out that it was actually a tanning salon/gelato place and that it's now closed, but my friend Rose's response to that post ("Ricotta ice cream! OMG") got me thinking. And then it got me googling. And then it got me, well, stirring and whisking; there's no actual cooking involved.
Ricotta Ice Cream
adapted from The Traveler's Lunchbox

1 c. heavy cream
7–9 T sugar
1 lb-ish container of the best ricotta you can find (the stuff I got at Sahadi's was a little under a pound, made somewhere nearby, and listed as its ingredients 'whole milk, starter, trace of salt')
1 c. milk
zest from 1 lemon
1/3 c. honey
1/4 t. cinnamon (you could increase this, even double it; I didn't want it to overwhelm the ricotta, but I couldn't even taste it)

Whisk the cream until soft peaks form, adding sugar gradually. In a separate bowl, whisk the other ingredients together, then fold the cream into the ricotta mixture gently. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight. In the morning, stir gently if the cream has risen to the top, and run through your ice cream maker.

I was really, really happy with how this turned out. And the couple of people who stopped by over the course of the weekend who tasted it were also pretty pleased. It tastes like a frozen Italian cheesecake. The ricotta is pleasantly grainy on the tongue, the honey is a gentle, earthy-sweet undertone, and the little bits of lemon brighten it right the hell up.

Saturday afternoon, I roasted a chicken, which is something I've never managed to do well — until now. I was always so paranoid about cooking it all the way though that it ended up drying out. I followed Deb's directions for the Zuni Cafe chicken and even though the skin totally ripped both times I had to flip the bird over, it was easily the best chicken I'd ever made, all burnished skin and succulent, rosemary-scented meat. A friend stopped by for a late lunch after her shift at the Coop and we did a pretty good job of ripping the carcass to pieces after I snapped a quick photo.
Later in the evening, I took the remaining meat off the bones and made stock, which, honestly, is one of the homiest, coziest, making-love-out-of-nothing-at-all activities I know of. I've never thought my homemade stock was anything special when I've done it in the past (bone-to-water ratio off, maybe?), but this batch was kind of out of this world. I'm putting it in the freezer for now, but I think there's going to be some Very Serious Risotto in my near future.

I didn't make the stuffed mushrooms, since they were going to be my contribution to an Easter brunch I had to miss because I was still working on Sunday, but book club is meeting at my place this week, so I'll make them then. Ditto the rhubarb upside-down cake. I did make the hibiscus lemonade though, sort of. I had picked up some dried hibiscus at Sahadi's and brewed some strong tea from it (1/2 c. hibiscus to 3 c. water), added 2/3 c. lemon juice (three lemons' worth), 1/4 c. sugar and filled the rest of the pitcher with water. It's more just like lemony hibiscus tea, but very tasty and somewhere between neutral and very good for you. I didn't take a dedicated picture of it, but you can see it in the photo of my workspace here:

In addition to chicken and ice cream, I like beverages and tidy piles of paper.

Off the wheel

The initial spinning of these three lovelies happened more than a decade ago and the skeined singles, two of the blackberry wool/mohair and one of that lovely, shiny Lincoln, had been hanging out in my stash since before I moved to New York. I had always sort of vaguely planned to use them for lace, but had no idea what kind of yardage I had and don't love working with single-ply yarns, mostly for durability reasons, but also because they can be kind of unpredictable, biasing and torquing at the slightest provocation.

I finally got around to plying them a few weeks ago and they're back in the stash now, sportweight/dk instead of lace/fingering, and with yardage calculated (280 for the blackberry, 192 for the Lincoln). I'm thinking mittens possibly, or a small scarf.

Two good things.

1. Cleaning out the fridge made delicious: two slices of bacon, chopped and cooked until crisp. Leftover roasted potatoes and garlic heated through in the grease, then shredded brussels sprouts added and cooked until barely tender.

2. A new sweater for spring. Loosely based on this pattern, but with a few changes to make it a little less sporty: cabled ribbing and different patterning when I get to the yoke (probably a simple lace). It's an unusual color for me, this orangey pink, but I like it.

This morning

-eating steel-cut oats cooked with dried cherries and blueberries
-reading Sophie Hannah's excellent The Dead Lie Down
-waiting for someone to pick up four bags of yarn I don't need/want
-getting ready for a haircut, so my ponytail quits following me around like a sad, possibly unhealthy creature I just can't shake
-thinking about an old friend whose mother's funeral is this afternoon

This weekend

I'll be:

—eating this particular dish as often as possible: soba noodles, sauteed greens with crushed red pepper, soy sauce, balsamic vinegar and sesame oil, and a runny egg on top.
—going through my yarn stash, getting rid of anything I don't love passionately and/or have a specific and immediate plan for. I listed several large bags of yarn on the Materials for the Arts site, which maintains a database of art supplies and other items people want to donate. Nonprofits can browse the list and get in touch with the donors directly. Within a couple of days I was contacted by a very lovely woman who runs an after-school program in East Harlem and is going to come take it all away on Sunday. My donation includes all of the Cotton Classic I was using for that lace skirt I posted a few days ago. I got to the waistband last night, tried it on, and immediately starting unraveling it. It wasn't flattering at all and wouldn't have been comfortable in hot weather, the fabric was too heavy and thick. So: gone.

—working on another Just Enough Ruffles scarf for a friend's birthday. This is some laceweight mohair I've had for at least a decade. It's nice stuff, but needs to either be used or disposed of. The color isn't especially flattering on me, but it'll be gorgeous on the brown-eyed brunette it's bound for. Sadly, when I just went to find a website for the company that made the yarn, British Mohair Spinners, one of the top hits was for a site called Derelict Places on which some dude recounts being chased out of their abandoned mill by junkies.
—reading. My TBR pile has gotten really out of hand lately, but there's nothing on the table there that I *don't* want to read. I've just started listing books on Goodreads again after ignoring it for at least a year, so feel free to friend me if you're active there.