Rhubarb! Rhubarb!!

There has been a lot of talk about some of the things made in the omneo kitchen, one thing that seems to be popular is Mr Omneo’s World Famous Rhubarb and Cheese Pie. Why is it world famous I hear you ask? Well, because for one thing it’s not really a pie, it has no pastry lid, resembling more a flan or tart. Other than that, it’s not very famous at all but it is very tasty and as a colleague thought the last one I made was ‘store bought’ (heaven forbid!) I decided to take some photos along the way.

So, what actually goes into this ‘pie’? Well, rhubarb for one thing as well as some cheese! the exact ingredients are as follows:

Pastry to line a 9″ diameter cake tin

Rhubarb filling
300g rhubarb cut into 1″ chunks
75g sugar
3tablespoons of plain flour

Cheese filling
200g low fat cream cheese (usually 1 small pack)
150g sugar
1 medium sized egg

Now, for the pastry you can either buy pre-baked shells at the supermarket, Tesco, Sainsbury, Waitrose all sell them and they are an easy way to have pastry without the mess of making your own and let’s not even go there on how much quicker it is!

However, if you feel like making your own follow your favourite recipe and line your cake tin. Bake it blind for 15 mins at gas mark 4. Remove beans/peas and bake for a further 5 mins then remove from oven.

Here’s my pastry with the chick peas weighing it down. I use dried chick peas when I bake blind, you can buy baking beans if you want to spend money but even rice works well.

Here is the pastry without the blind filling

To make the cheese filling mix the cheese, egg and sugar in a bowl until you have a lump free liquid. Here’s what Mr Omneo made.

In a small pan, mix the rhubarb, sugar, flour and 1 tablespoon of water/pineapple juice/vodka/brandy/whatever liquid you like. Let this simmer in the pan for about 10-15mins or until the rhubarb is soft. Some like it cooked to a stringy pulp, others like it fairly firm so that its cooked more in the oven, the choice is yours. Mr Omneo favours mixing everything over a high heat until the sugar dissolves and the rhubarb starts to soften around the edges but is still fairly firm in the centre. This is what Mr Omneo’s mixture looked like

After that its simply a matter of adding the rhubarb filling into the pastry case, like so:-

Then pour over the cheese filling to give you something looking like this:-

Pop this into the oven at gas mark 4 for 30-40 mins. you should then have something looking a lot like this :-