Rhubarb Oat Crisp

This may be the first time rhubarb is appearing on this blog, but I must confess that I've secretly been working with it in several variations over these past few months. In late June, a fresh supply of rhubarb wandered away from its backyard garden bed and into the freezer. Since making its abode, I've noticed the rhubarb seems to spontaneously replenish itself, despite my relentless attempts to cook it away in cobbler, bread, and even cookies. Yet this seemingly endless store has not worn down my appetite for rhubarb; far from it, the blushing red spines have transformed what was a suspicious avoidance of the vegetable* into a fondness for its easily-tamable tartness and adaptable nature. A rhubarb-fan, I have become.

This is the fourth of five rhubarb recipes I've made, and it's a darn good one. Preceding this crisp, biscuit cobbler, quick bread, and pocket pies emerged from the oven, each laden with rhubarb. All proved tasty save for the bread, which called for a heavy hand in the butter dish. My preoccupation with using the rhubarb as efficiently and with as much variety as possible meant that I didn't pick up the camera for most recipes; but I'm a dear fan of the fruit crisp, so I had the wherewithal to capture a few portraits of this one. The rhubarb itself is doctored with a very simple sugar-cinnamon toss that sweetens the rhubarb without extinguishing its flavor. The crumb topping needed only the classic oat-sugar-flour mixture, which I both sprinkled and clumped on top of the fruit to create not one even layer, a craggy cap of buttery crunch.

Filling from Smitten Kitchen's Rhubarb Cobbler 

Rhubarb Crisp:

For Filling:

6 cups of rhubarb, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces (2 pounds or so)

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon

For the crisp topping:

6 TBSP unsalted butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

2/3 cup unbleached, all-purpose flour

1/2 cup oats

1/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

Directions:

--Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Mix together rhubarb, sugar, and cinnamon. Spoon into a deep dish glass pie pan or 1-quart baking dish, and let macerate while you prepare the topping. 

--In a medium bowl, mix together sugar, flour, oats, salt, and cinnamon. Add the butter and break into chunks with your fingers. Mix with a fork or fingers until the butter is incorporated in pea sized pieces and the dough begins to hold together. Use about 1/3 of the topping to form 6-8 small clumps of dough and scatter on top of the rhubarb. Sprinkle on the rest of the filling, covering the rhubarb to the edges.

--Bake until the rhubarb is bubbling and the topping is lightly browned, 35-40 minutes.

*Turns out rhubarb is indeed a vegetable.