Rhubarb soup with Rhubarb ice cream

Tivoli's rhubarb ice cream and rhubarb soup. Delicious.

Tivoli is a fun park in Copenhagen, Denmark.  It is a combination of fairground, shops and restaurants and every child's dream.  I was there for dinner in June and we got this amazing desert.  It was ice cold Rhubarb soup with some sort of dark chocolate/marzipan wafer and Rhubarb ice cream on top.  Not only did it taste good, but it looked really pretty so a snapped a photo of it.

When I came home I looked for recipes of Rhubarb soup and found a few.  This is the one I made and it is delicious.  Serve it ice cold (put it in the freezer for 10 minutes just before serving) with ice cream, either rhubarb or a good quality vanilla.  Any addition of dark chocolate in whatever form you can think of is a treat.  As is the mint leaves and berries.

Rhubarb soup (serves 4):
500 g rhubarb
200 g sugar
3 dl water
1 vanilla pod
Juice from one lemon if needed

Cut the rhubarb into small pieces.  Cut the vanilla pod into two and scrape off the vanilla corns into the sugar.  Put the water and sugar into a pot and bring to boil.  You can put the vanilla pod into the pot to simmer, but I put my pods in oil to use in creams and lotions.  Let simmer for 10 minutes.  Taste and adjust with more sugar or some lemon juice if needed.  Siv the rhubarb compot.  The liquid should be a pretty red soup.  Put the soup into the fridge.  It will keep well for a few days.   It can also be frozen for later use.  But serve it really, really cold with ice cream and decorate with a few mint leaves and redcurrants if you have them.  The left over rhubarb mush in the siv is lovely on toast for the next few days.

The view from our Paris apartment (ok, it's not ours, we rent
it, but we like to call it ours. With a view like that who can
blame us)

The best Rhubarb ice cream is sold in the ice cream shop on Île Saint-Louis in Paris.  It's on the corner opposite the rear end of Notre Dame, over the bridge.  And if you don't know it you'll recognize it by the long line.  But it's rare flavor to get in shops, so here is a recipe.  It is quite good and really easy to make.   I like the fact that it doesn't ask for all my egg yolks.  The trick is to use fairly small stalks and cut them into very small pieces.

Rhubarb ice cream:
300 g / 10.5 oz small cut rhubarb (that was about 5 stalks for me)
1 dl sugar / 3.4 oz
1/2 dl water / 1.9 oz water - if needed
3 dl / 10 oz whipping cream
2 egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla sugar (or essence)
1 tbs icing sugar

Cut the rhubarb into small pieces and put into a pot with the sugar and a little bit of water if needed.  Cook for a few minutes at low heat until the rhubarb is soft and mushy.  Take off the heat and let cool.  It doesn't take long, I took the dogs for a walk.

Mix the egg yolks with the icing sugar and vanilla.  Whip the cream and fold the yolk mixture into the cream.  Fold in the cooled rhubarb.  Put into an ice cream maker and follow instructions for that (mostly that you turn the icecreammaker on before you pour the mix into it) OR put into a bowl and stick it in the freezer.  If the latter, take out every now and again to stir through until frozen.  Stirring will prevent large crystals from forming.

My version of rhubarb ice cream and rhubarb soup with the
tuile cookie. The spoon is a Christmas spoon - a gift from
my stepmother in law and father in law.

I don't have recipe for a marizipanychocholateythingy but I made these, cause they looked kinda cute.

Tuiles:
80 g soft butter
80 g sugar
50 g flour
50 g glucose sirup

Mix together.  Smear it out on a baking sheet (I did four circles) and bake for ... well the recipe said "about 5 minutes at 175C /350F or until golden in colour"  That took about 20 minutes for me.  Now the rest of the instructions said: "Take the baking sheet out and wait a few minutes until it is cold enough to handle.  You can then make it into interesting shapes.  Let it cool completely and store in an airtight container."  This apparently works if you have Marthaesque composure in the kitchen.  I do not, so my instructions would be more along the lines of:  "You can make TRULY unique shapes while handling this gooey mess in a blind panic furiously trying not to burn off your fingers."

Bon appétit!
.