Rhubarb and Apple Compote

After a good lunch, it’s very pleasant and healthy to wash it down with a tasty compote. Everyone knows that. Somewhere I read that compote is a dessert. I disagree. Compote is compote. In hot weather, for example, I drink it all the time. Along with hibiscus tea and iced tea, at home we always keep apple compote, currant compote or uzvar (uzvar), a dried fruit compote, in the refrigerator.

Unlike plain water, cold compote quenches thirst perfectly. The word “compote” probably sounds much the same in most languages. In French it’s compot, in English compote, in German Kompott, and so on.

In the old days in Kyivan Rus’, people boiled berries and fruit, then cooled them and drank the drink all the time. It was called vzvar or uzvar. Dried fruit was used very widely, most often apples, pears and plums. A clay pot with washed dried fruit and well or spring water went into a hot, well-fired stove. The pot stayed in the stove until it cooled completely. I still remember from childhood how good it was.

And that’s only fresh compotes – there is also a whole category of canned ones. The recipes for those alone would fill a multi-volume encyclopedia.

The drink can be made from any edible berries and fruit. And experience shows that berries and fruit don’t even need to be boiled. It’s enough to pour boiling water over them and leave until completely cool. It’s extremely important to watch the temperature so the fruit doesn’t lose its shape and turn to mush. The simplest way is to make a syrup of water and sugar (or a sugar substitute) and only then add fresh berries or pre-soaked dried fruit.

Rhubarb (Rheum) is a vegetable plant of the knotweed family, a very large herb with thick, fleshy leaf stalks. It’s a perennial that grows in vegetable gardens in big clumps (or not clumps – I don’t know what it’s properly called). The fleshy stalks are usually eaten, after peeling. Rhubarb juice is even used to make wine and jam.