Fooling around

Pudding is always a strategic flex. Plus, what your kitchen kit says about you.

I accidentally fell down a LinkedIn rabbit hole the other day and felt as filthy afterwards as I would if I’d fallen in an offal pit.¹ Apologies if you’re the leaderful type, but I can’t be doing with all the humble brags and networky faux bonhomie that powers that particular platform and I avoid it as much as possible.

Rhubarb, by Monica Grabowska for Unsplash

That doesn’t mean I’m not all about the strategic pivot though. A year or so ago, for example, I very strategically gave my friend Charlotte a copy of Kath Irvine’s Edible Backyard book. Let me tell you, this move has paid off in actual spades. Last autumn we benefited with buckets of quinces and last spring she split a massive rhubarb crown and sent me home with it. Last weekend, after we ate cauliflower from her garden and she showed off their potato plot, she sent me home with a big bundle of rhubarb. Talk about enabling the change you want to see in the world. The only thing better than having your own large and lovely garden is having a friend with one. Such a life hack, right? Maybe I’ll conjure up a post for LinkedIn.

In the meantime, I’m going to eat Rhubarb Fool. A fool is a late-16th century English invention that’s basically a blend of cooked sour-sweet fruit and whipped cream or custard. Elizabeth David called it “soft, pale, creamy, untroubled’, which sounds like exactly what the doctor ordered. While it feels like the sort of thing that the Bennett sisters would eat in Pride and Prejudice, there’s something quite elegant and modern about it too. I can imagine influencers making a 2026 version involving whipped cottage cheese and protein powder, but we’re not going to go there.

Here’s a rhubarb fool I made in 2019, while living in France and writing recipes for a New Zealand newspaper. I searched what felt like every single market and supermarket in southwest France before FINALLY finding some in the holy grail of food that is the Marché Victor-Hugo in Toulouse.

Rhubarb Fool + some variations

You don’t really need a recipe for fool - it really can be as simple as fruit + cream (or yoghurt, or a mix thereof) = loveliness, but here are some instructions for rule-followers. This amount serves four.

500g (5-6 stalks) rhubarb, washed and trimmed, cut into 4cm lengths

2 Tbsp caster sugar

200ml cream

1 tsp rosewater (optional)

1 cup natural yoghurt

Put the rhubarb and sugar in a pot with a splash of water. Cover and cook over low heat until very soft (about 10 minutes). Scrape into a bowl and let cool completely.

Whip the cream to soft peaks, then fold in the yoghurt and rosewater, if using. Stir through the cold rhubarb - it should be pleasingly streaky. Cover and chill for at least an hour to let everything meld together.

To serve, scoop into little glass bowls and serve with your fanciest little spoons.

Variations

• For dairy-free eaters: replace the cream and yoghurt with 1 1/2 cups coconut yoghurt. It will be VERY rich, so you’ll only need a small amount.

• For lovers of rhubarb and custard: replace the yoghurt with the same amount of cold custard (so you’re effectively making rhubarb-ish creme diplomat).

• For fans of crunch: crumble some meringues through the fool before chilling (this is what I’ve done in the photo above).

• For enthusiastic eaters who think that this isn’t enough for pudding: use the fool mixture to fill a split sponge cake, or to dollop alongside a slice of lemon drizzle loaf.

• For people who haven’t strategically gotten their friends to grow rhubarb: any tart fruit is good here - gooseberries, red currants, blackberries, raspberries, even very tart pureed apple…

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Good Things

The Heart-Shaped Tin

After I read Bee Wilson’s brilliant The Way We Eat Now in 2019, I ran around telling everyone I knew with an interest in food to read it too. Now I feel the same about this book, which came out late last year. It’s a book about love and loss (not long after her husband of two decades gave her the ‘it’s not me, it’s you’ speech, the heart-shaped tin in which she baked their wedding cake falls out of a cupboard and landed at her feet) - and the unexpected things our kitchenalia reveals about us. Bee also has a newish newsletter, Until Golden.

Paradise (regained)

Season one of this post-apocalyptic thriller was one of my favourite TV experiences in 2025, so I’m beyond thrilled to see it back. It’s desperately dark, so not for people who want cheerful, silly TV (that’s what TaskMaster UK is for, right?) but otherwise I highly recommend it.

Screengrab from Bic Runga’s new music video for ‘Red Sunset’

Bic is back!

If you’re of similar vintage to me you’ll recall when Bic Runga hit the big-time in the late 90s/early 2000s, in the peak time of dresses-over-jeans and choker necklaces. After a bit of a hiatus she’s back with a new album. This Music 101 interview is a great listen for fans old (who are you calling old?) and new.

Thank you for reading. Have an excellent week x

1. This DID actually happen to me when I was a kid - luckily it was an old pit that had been unused for a while and there were a couple of paint tins in it that I could use to help myself clamber out. The 80s were a different time!