Rustic Rhubarb Tartlettes

Do you like rhubarb? Before this summer, I'd never touched the stuff, filing it in a category of unappealing comestibles that Southern people had an inexplicable fondness for, like okra, collard greens, and those omelets paula dean makes inside of plastic baggies. But then it showed up in our farm box, and not really knowing what to do with the pretty pink stalks besides propping them decoratively in a canning jar, I figured I might as well eat them as long as they were steeped with overgenerous heaps of sugar. Not feeling ambitious enough to make my own pie dough for a strawberry 'barb chess pie, I poked around a bit until I found something a little more up my alley: barely sweet, rustic, and yes oh yes easy corn-crust rhubarb mini-tarts. When "rustic" comes into play, you just know we're talking homely, ugly, misshapen, and utterly charming. Not to mention delicious, which these little monsters are; somewhere in between the taste of pecan pie (inexplicably, and wonderfully) and a corn biscuit slathered with homemade preserves, these tarts are easy-going enough to serve at tea time or as a dinner party dessert, though I think they taste best eaten standing up at the fridge, out of a square of parchment paper, in the middle of a hot July night when nothing else will do . And just like that, I found myself craving . . . . rhubarb.

recipe here.

Notes:
-I used a real bourbon vanilla bean. you should too, don't think you can get away with any of that vanilla extract stuff, you joker.

-Corn flour was a little tricky to find, but if your grocery sells Bob's Red Mill, you should be able to find it with the other esoteric flours and spelts.