Nigel Slater’s recipes for rhubarb granita with vanilla cream, and blood orange and pistachio cake

The fresh flavours of rhubarb and zesty blood orange light up dark February days. As children, we would always play in each other’s gardens. At the bottom of which, somewhere between the compost heap and the wheelbarrow, would be a patch of rhubarb; scarlet stalks hidden under vast emerald leaves and, occasionally, when everyone had enough crumble, left to sprout plumes of creamy white flowers. In winter, the crowns would sleep under upturned buckets whose bottoms had rusted to a lacework of tiny holes and would no longer hold water.

My current garden refuses to give a home to rhubarb, just as it does to wild garlic, and I am resigned to buying my stalks at the greengrocers. I crave the cosy glow of rhubarb on a grey winter’s day, be it under a crust, stirred into a cake or sitting in a pool of its own jewel-bright juice for breakfast. Rhubarb also makes an entrancing granita, served in a pile of glistening pink crystals with a spoonful of vanilla-infused cream as a contrast.

The other beacon of light this month is the blood orange, whose juice will startle us back to life in the morning and whose garnet-freckled flesh makes the prettiest addition to a ceviche, crisp winter salad or dessert. I offer it with slices of buttery cake, the crumb studded with pistachios and scented with orange blossom. For this ruby red granita, the frozen block of juice is transformed into a mound of sparkling crystals by running a good strong dinner fork across its surface. Leaving the granita out of the freezer for 20 minutes or so before you start will make the job easier. You can grate the whole block, pop it back into the freezer, tightly covered, then dip into as you wish. Serves 8. Ready in 4 hours.

For the granita:. rhubarb 700g. water 500ml. caster sugar 125g. blood oranges 3, small and juicy. For the vanilla cream:. mascarpone 250g. double cream 125ml. vanilla paste or extract 1 tsp. Remove and discard the leaves and white ends of the rhubarb. Cut each stalk into short lengths about the size of a wine cork, then put in a stainless-steel or enamelled saucepan. Pour in the water and add the caster sugar. Finely grate the zest from 1 orange, taking care not to remove any white pith, and add to the rhubarb. Squeeze the juice from the oranges and add to the rhubarb.

Bring the rhubarb to the boil, then lower the heat and leave to simmer for 5 or 6 minutes, until the sugar has dissolved and the rhubarb has softened. Place a large sieve over a wide jug or bowl, spoon in the rhubarb and its juice and leave to drain. Pour the juice into a plastic freezer container, cover with a lid and freeze for 4 hours, or until firm. Refrigerate the rhubarb from the sieve. For the vanilla cream, whip the cream until it sits in soft mounds. (Don’t be tempted to beat until stiff.) Gently stir in the mascarpone and vanilla paste.

Put the chilled rhubarb in a food processor or blender and process to a purée. Pour into a bowl. Once the granita is frozen, scratch the surface firmly with the tines of a fork, pulling up furrows of ice crystals. Spoon the purée into serving dishes, then add heaps of the granita on top along with spoonfuls of vanilla cream. If you cut the cake into squares, you should get nine servings. I often use a round biscuit cutter, which I find more pleasing than a straight-edged block of cake. The leftovers from cutting into rounds make good snacking, or freeze them for a trifle later. The cake will keep for a couple of days in an air-tight container. Serves 6. Ready in 1 hour.

For the cake:. butter 225g. golden caster sugar 225g. blood orange 1. lemon 1. self-raising flour 110g. ground almonds 60g. pistachios 60g. eggs 3, large. For the syrup:. granulated or caster sugar 100g. lemon 1, large. orange flower water 1 tsp. To serve:. crystallised orange 1, to decorate (optional). You will need a square cake tin 20-22cm in diameter, lined with baking parchment. Heat the oven to 180C/gas mark 4. Using a food mixer, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Finely grate the orange and lemon, taking care not to include any of the bitter white pith. Mix together the flour and ground almonds. Grind the pistachios to a powder, but less finely than commercial ground almonds; they should be a little nubbly.

Break the eggs into a bowl and beat with a fork. With the beater turning, slowly introduce the eggs to the butter and sugar. Should the mixture curdle even slightly, add a little of the flour. Mix in the remaining flour and nuts. Transfer the mixture to the lined tin, lightly smoothing the surface. Bake in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes till springy to the touch. To make the syrup, squeeze the juice of the lemon and orange into a small saucepan, add the sugar, then bring to the boil. Let the mixture cook for a couple of minutes until slightly syrupy, then remove from the heat and stir in the orange flower water. Using a metal skewer, pierce about 20 holes in the surface of the cake, then spoon the citrus syrup over. Leave to cool then use a round cookie cutter to make 6 discs of cake.