Citrusy rhubarb-polenta cake

When my grandmother died in September last year, she was 87. She was one of the happiest, most content people I’ve ever known, despite the fact that in the last twenty-odd years of her life her husband died, and six of her sisters, and her son-in-law, and so many of her friends. That’s just what happens when you start to go beyond a certain age, I guess. But my point is, as the cliché goes, she’d had a long and full and happy life, so there is no call to be sad for her on that front.

But of course I’m sad for myself, especially so now that my wedding day is drawing near and she won’t be there like I’d always dreamed. I prefer not to think about it too much; when I do, I inevitably start thinking about my dad who also won’t be there.

Sometimes the thoughts sneak up on you though, you can’t see them coming and avoid them. Just now I was zesting a mineola and two limes for a cake for book club tonight, idly wondering if I should make citrusy iced tea with the insides of the zested fruit. That made me think of homemade lemonade which I haven’t had for ages, and bam – my grandmother’s homemade lemonade. A thick sweet lemony syrup with lots of little bits of zest that we mixed with water, usually the fizzy water made with the ancient Soda Stream. I think that’s the last homemade lemonade I drank. It must have been years ago, she hadn’t made it for a long time, and now I wonder where the recipe is, if one of us still has it and if I could maybe make some.

And then of course within seconds, leaping and bounding on from lemonade, I’m thinking about the wedding and the outfit my grandmother had already bought for it and what my dad would have thought of it all. The lime and mineola zest lies forgotten on the kitchen counter.

The cake does get made eventually, zest and all. That’s after I remember that I was lucky enough to have had such a grandmother for so long, and that she was so happy for me and Andrew. After I think that my dad would have thought well of it all. Especially since so many times, little things about Andrew remind me of him, and I know how lucky I am that I’m marrying him. What a happy day it will be.

Citrusy rhubarb polenta cake

Serves about 16

I like the gritty texture of polenta cakes, and the fact that most of them aren’t too sweet. I wanted a loaf cake but had quite a bit of batter and rhubarb left over after filling my standard-sized loaf pan, so I made four little loaves as well. In a standard round cake tin you’ll end up with just one cake. The rhubarb is very tangy, so I balanced it with the sweet citrusy drizzle for the bigger loaf cake. I left the little loaves plain, though, so that I can justify eating them for breakfast.

Also, I followed all the rhubarb cooking rules and cooked mine in a stainless steel pot – not aluminium, copper or iron, which reacts with rhubarb and makes it brown. I still ended up with brownish rhubarb. No idea why, but it tasted good.

1 large-ish bunch rhubarb stalks

½ cup sugar

1 orange (or mineola, which is what I could find)

2 limes

1 ½ cups cake flour

¾ cup fine polenta

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

4 large eggs

1 cup sugar

¾ cup olive oil

1 ½ cups sifted icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 160 C. Butter your cake tin, line with baking parchment, butter again, and dust with flour (you probably don’t have to do all of this, but I was convinced the cake would stick otherwise). Set up a stand mixer with a whisk attachment (or alternatively, you can use a hand-whisk and large bowl).

Wash the rhubarb thoroughly and chop it into inch-thick pieces. Place it in a ceramic or stainless steel pot along with the ½ cup of sugar, and place it over medium heat. No need to add any water – as it warms, the rhubarb will release its own juices and dissolve the sugar, and cook down into an apple-sauce-like mixture. Stir it every now and then as it cooks, about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, zest the orange and limes, and squeeze their juices into a small bowl. When the rhubarb has cooked down, add about half of the citrus juice and stir, then remove from the heat.

Whisk the flour, polenta, baking powder and salt together in a bowl until well-mixed. Add the eggs and 1 cup sugar to the stand mixer bowl and whisk on medium-high speed until the mixture is light and thick – this should take about 4 minutes. By hand it unfortunately takes more like 10 minutes. Add the orange and lime zest, and whisk again to mix thoroughly.

Add the flour mixture and olive oil to the whisked egg-sugar mixture by turn, whisking all the while – a third of the flour mixture, then half the oil, again a third of the flour mixture, the other half of the oil, and end with the final third of the flour mixture.

Now you have a choice: either spoon the rhubarb mixture onto the bottom of the cake pan(s) and cover with batter, or pour the batter into the pan(s) and drop spoonfuls of the rhubarb into the batter. In the first method, you’ll end up with an upside-down cake, and in the second, the rhubarb will peek out but will mostly be baked into the cake.

Bake for about 30 to 40 minutes (little loaves will take 15 to 20 minutes, a regular loaf about 30 minutes, and a big round cake will take 35 to 40 minutes), turning the cake 180 degrees halfway through the baking time so it bakes evenly. While it bakes, you can whisk the remaining citrus juice with the icing sugar to make a citrusy glaze.

The cake is done when a knife or toothpick inserted into it comes out clean. Remove the cake from the oven and cool in the pan for five minutes before either turning out (for the upside-down cake) or lifting out (for the baked-in-rhubarb version). Drizzle with the glaze, if you like, or leave plain for a slightly more virtuous cake.

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Plates and bowls

In the past two weeks, I’ve managed to break my two favourite salad bowls. They were identical: old white porcelain with little pink roses  and mostly scrubbed-off gold edging. I think they were really meant to be soup bowls. I thought they were pretty, but they were also exactly the right width and depth for the giant salads I make every day and proceed to eat all by myself. Yesterday I made my salad in another bowl, also pretty, but not quite wide enough and too deep. It worked but it was disconcerting.

I can’t just go buy another one of my favourites because I wouldn’t know where to find one. I got the one bowl from my mom about four years ago, along with a collection of other beautifully old and weathered bowls, plates, and platters, all collected at a junk shop in a small town in the Free State. It was one of the best birthday gifts I’ve ever been given. The second bowl I discovered by chance two years later at another junk shop, this time one at the top of a steep hill in Cape Town. I immediately bought it to join my other one.

The junk shop in Cape Town is a place I’ve spent hours in. Not so much anymore, but when I first moved to Cape Town I used to walk up that hill, up an up and up, at least once a month. Then I’d take my time to sift through every item crammed into the two rooms – crockery and cutlery, but also mirrors, paintings, chairs, card tables, lamps, ashtrays, gramophones, suitcases, who knows what else.  I certainly didn’t know what half the things were. I was a student at the time with my little bit of disposable income going mostly towards drinks and late-night takeout so I don’t remember ever actually buying anything, cheap though it mostly was. But I did decide that one day, when I was making a home instead of just living somewhere, I’d collect the kind of pretty crockery I saw at the junk shop, all mismatched and old and worn, and I’d use them just like that instead of buying shiny new matching sets. Aside from liking the way these old things looked, the idea was that I wouldn’t have to be too sad if any of my things broke, since nothing would be part of a set and a broken bowl could be easily replaced by any other pretty old bowl from a junk shop.

Apparently I spoke about this idea quite a lot, because soon after I started making my first home, gifts of pretty old crockery started to appear at birthdays and Christmases. My mom’s big box filled to the brim was one of these. Another one was a gift of six little coffee cups and saucers that I had noticed and admired at the hilltop junk shop with my best friend. They looked similar to a teapot I’d found at a junk shop clear across the country, and I’m not sure why I didn’t buy them then. Months later, I was sitting in my cubicle, staring out the window despondently, when my friend called and told me to quickly come outside, she was on the sidewalk and wanted to give me something. It wasn’t my birthday or any other kind of special occasion but there she was with a package containing the six little cups and saucers.

A few pieces in my collection – which makes it all sound so much grander than it is – aren’t from junk shops. There’s my old gzhel mug from Russia, and the two tea-brewing mugs from my mom’s trip to Singapore. There are also my four Betta bowls. Betta bowls are an institution in my extended family. They are white and soft blue handmade pottery, and not just bowls, but dishes, plates, cutting boards, anything that took Betta’s fancy or that she was nicely asked to make. 

Betta was my great-aunt, so her sister, my grandmother, had many Betta bowls. Betta died a few years ago, and then my grandmother too, just about three months ago. After the funeral, all of the cousins picked a few things from my grandmother's house, to remember her by. I picked a candle holder and two small Betta bowls that I had used for my morning oatmeal in on my last visit to my grandmother. My mom had two more of the same at her house that she didn’t use, and since she felt they belong together I now have four. I like that they remind me of my grandmother and Betta when I use them every day. Of course, every one of these bowls will break one day, as will all my other pretty old things. But by then there will be even more other pretty old things with their own stories of discovery and acquisition.

It’s possible that I’ll come across another one of my favourite salad bowls in yet another junk shop one day. That would be a nice surprise. I might also get used to the new pink salad bowl and become attached to using it for my salads, until it breaks and I move on to the next one. 

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