Rhubarb and blood oranges crumble with barberries

I often face a question – where to find inspiration? I always say that I don’t need to search for it because all the most beautiful had been created by nature. I just need to go to farmer’s market and buy some seasonal goodies. I was wondering for a while what to cook with beautiful blood oranges which are on season right now and just then I bought a bunch of beautiful pink rhubarb and got the answer. A dessert! A crumble!

Rhubarb crumble is a very classical dessert so I wanted to play around with it a bit by adding a few new ingredients. I stewed the rhubarb with blood orange juice and got a pretty deep pink colour which I loved very much. I wanted to leave natural acidic taste of rhubarb so I also added barberries which are very popular in Persian cuisine and have a tart taste similar to rhubarb. I never used barberries in desserts to be honest, but I loved this experiment!
I added black sesame seeds to the crumble mix because I love black and pink combination very much and on my opinion it made this crumble quite pretty!

Rhubarb and blood oranges crumble with barberries

(serves 2)

800g pink rhubarb
2 blood oranges (juice)
4 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp dried barberries (can be replaced with dried sour cherries)
100 g flour
70 g butter
1 tbsp black sesame seeds (optional)

Clean the rhubarb and cut into 2 cm pieces. Squeeze juice from 2 blood oranges. Put the rhubarb into a medium saucepan and pour over with orange juice. Add barberries, cover with a lid and bring to a boil. Gently simmer over a low heat for about 10 minutes. Turn off the heat, add maple syrup and set aside.
Make crumble mix. In a medium bowl mix flour and cold butter cut into pieces. Mix with your fingertips until it crumbs. Add sesame seeds.
Heat the oven to 200C.
Place the rhubarb into a baking pan (30×20) or two portioned baking pans. Sprinkle over with the crumble mix. Bake for about 20 minutes until crust is golden and the crumble is bubbling.
Serve warm with an ice cream, double cream or vanilla custard.