Donal Skehan: Baked rhubarb with roast white chocolate and rhubarb sorbet

Serves: 4
Course: Dessert
Cooking Time: 1 hr 0 mins
Ingredients
  • Serves 4
  • For the rhubarb sorbet:
  • 100ml water
  • 500g rhubarb, chopped
  • 75g caster sugar
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • Seeds scraped from 1 vanilla pod
  • For the poached rhubarb:
  • 500g young or early-forced rhubarb
  • 3 tbsp caster sugar
  • Juice of 2 oranges
  • For the roast white chocolate:
  • 200g white chocolate, best quality, chopped
  • Sea salt

Roasting white chocolate is a tip I picked up from Kate Packwood of the Wildflour Bakery. She roasts it in the oven until the three key ingredients, sugar, milk and cocoa butter, caramelise.

The resulting copper-toned chunks are an altogether more sophisticated end product than regular white chocolate could ever dream to be. For the rhubarb sorbet, place all the ingredients in a large saucepan, pour in 100ml of water and bring to a steady simmer. Cook for 10 minutes until the rhubarb has softened. Remove from the heat and tip the contents of the pan into a blender. Blitz until completely smooth and allow to cool completely before transferring to an ice-cream machine to process to a sorbet. Transfer the sorbet to an airtight container and freeze for at least one hour before serving.

If you don’t have an ice-cream machine, freeze until set, then blitz again, and freeze once more. Remove from freezer a few minutes before serving.

To prepare the poached rhubarb, heat the oven to 150 degrees celsius/gas 2 then trim and cut across on the diagonal into five centimetre pieces. Place in a ceramic baking dish that will take the amount in a single layer, snugly. Whisk together the sugar and orange juice and pour on top. Cover tightly with foil and roast for 30 minutes, then remove from the oven, but leave the foil in place for 10 minutes. Allow to cool.

Lay the white chocolate in a non-stick baking sheet. Place in the oven at 160 degrees celsius/gas 3 to roast for 10 minutes, or until it goes a rich, golden brown. Remove from the oven, sprinkle with a little sea salt, and allow to cool completely.

Serve the poached rhubarb with small quenelles of rhubarb sorbet and a sprinkle of roast white chocolate.