Salted Pistachio, Lemon and Rhubarb Easter Dessert

A simple plated dessert for the Easter Weekend

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Happy Friday, Happy Easter!

Today I thought I would buck the trend a little. I am sure that your social feeds and your email inboxes are inundated with the easter duo of chocolate and hot cross buns and whilst I, of course, love those things (see last week for example) I wanted to give you something a little different for this easter weekend. Something still very in keeping with the holiday and very in keeping with the season but something less traditional. 

The way this recipe came to be was one of the regular ways and reasons I develop new recipes, need. Last weekend we had friends come over for an afternoon of board games (I came last in all three games of Catan) and dinner. The dinner was easy, I’m in the middle of developing a NY-style pizza recipe, and our friends were willing guinea pigs. But, if you’re coming to my house you're expecting dessert but I had very little time to make something involved, it needed to be easy to make and have the ability to be made in advance. The result is today’s recipe, a thick lemon posset served with a couple salted pistachio sables and some simply roasted rhubarb. Three simple elements, that come together, to make a seriously good dessert. 

Can a cookie be chic? Because that’s the energy the salted pistachio sables give off. A simple slice and bake recipe the dough can be made well in advance and even baked off a few days before they’re needed. The outside of the sables are coated in Demerara sugar for a bit of sparkle and bit of crunch and they're finished with a generous sprinkle of flaked sea salt. Because you’re making dessert for your friends the sable recipe makes a few more than is needed so you have a little treat just for yourself. 

The roasted rhubarb is as simple as it gets, rhubarb tossed with a touch of sugar and the juice of an orange, baked just until the rhubarb just starts to lose its structure, tender but not yet soft or mushy. Baked with the sugar and orange juice you are also making a blush pink syrup to pour over the dessert, to tie everything together. 

The lemon posset is a miracle of a dessert, so incredibly simple but so incredibly good and extremely elegant. When I say simple I mean as simple as it gets, I genuinely can’t think of many things that take only 3 ingredients and barely any work. I say 3 ingredients but I do add a little vanilla which is not normally included but it goes so well with all the other elements in the dessert. 

New Cookbook

Before we get to the recipe I wanted to highlight a new cookbook that landed on my doorstep at the start of the week, a cookbook perfectly timed for Easter because it is all about Eggs. Good Eggs is written by my friend, the brilliant food writer,

Ed Smith

. Not only is the book incredibly beautiful, with a cover I am in complete love with, the book is packed with recipes you will want to make. I know that seems like an obvious thing to say about a cookbook but there are some books that are just so cookable, so well attuned to the home cook, that they really fill you with ideas and inspiration to get cooking, and Good Eggs is absolutely one of those books. I am home alone next week whilst my semi-vegetarian boyfriend is out of town so I think the first recipe I will be making is the sausage larb and fried egg bun.

Check out Ed’s book wherever books are sold!

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