Rhubarb crumble ice cream

So I have an admission to make: I have not always been a fan of rhubarb. Growing up, I could never quite see what the fuss was all about, and I staunchly steered clear of any and all rhubarb dishes. Was I missing out or what? Alas for this recent convert, rhubarb is not always easy to find in Colombo and even when I have managed to stumble upon it, it looks tired, woody and not at all inspiring.

My family and I spent a lovely long weekend in the misty, mountain town of Nuwara Eliya. At an elevation of 1,868m above sea level and nestled among emerald green tea plantations, Nuwara Eliya takes you back in time to an era when the British would escape the stiflingly hot confines of Colombo and the South for some much needed respite in the cooler climes of the mountains. Although today, the illegal buildings mushrooming everywhere have robbed the town of much of its old world charm, there is still a wistful, nostalgic feel about the place as if it is remembering better times.

Vegetable cultivation is abundant in those parts and we stopped at a couple of roadside stalls on our way home to stock up on beautiful fresh produce – plump, plum-coloured aubergine, traffic light capsicums, perfectly shaped carrots and beautiful, ruby-red rhubarb. I think we might have been hasty in our eagerness to get our hands on the great produce because, as we wound our way down the mountainside, each subsequent stall we passed seemed to boast even bigger, perkier and more vividly red stalks of rhubarb. I returned to Colombo, planning all the rhubarb dishes I was going to try out but realized, after washing, trimming and stripping off leaves, that I was only left with a precious half kilo.

So what to do? After flipping through most of the recipe books in my library, I was tempted by Nigella Lawson’s recipe for Rhubarb Fool. It looked delicious, but I thought that perhaps it could be even better in ice cream form, as, well, most things are. I resorted to Google for some guidance and, wouldn’t you know it: one of the very first recipes that popped up for rhubarb ice cream looked divine. Even better, it had a crumble swirled through it. How could that possibly be bad?

I got to work and was gratified to learn that my instinct was spot on. This is a deliciously light and dreamy ice cream, that still surprises you with the depth of flavour of the tart rhubarb. Its ingredients are simple – cream, rhubarb, lemon and sugar. The crumble mixture is toasted at the same time that the rhubarb is roasting in the oven. But the finished product is so much more sublime than the sum of its parts. A lovely, blushing pink from the roasted rhubarb purée, this ice cream has all the comforting familiarity of a classic warm rhubarb crumble, but the fact that it is an ice cream means that it is as coolly refreshing as a weekend in the mountains. It is exactly the coping mechanism that I need right now, to deal with the oppressive heat that May brings to Colombo.