Every spring, my mother hovered over the vegetable bins in the markets in anticipation of the arrival of rhubarb. She’d bring those gorgeous red stalks home, chop them in half, add sugar and stew it all until it resembled stringy grey-green mush. Revolting. At least I always thought so. Maybe if you added ice cream or something… but no. Too fattening, and it wouldn’t be the stewed rhubarb Mom remembered from her grandmother’s garden. I had thought that was bad enough. Then a friend informed me that she and her brother, both of whom hated cooked vegetables, crunched celery-like rhubarb raw out of the garden, sometimes managing to sneak past a vigilant mother and dip the ends in the sugar bowl to mitigate the tartness. Although neither appealed to me, both hark back to a time when being a locovore was the norm; we ate fresh fruits and vegetables only in their season. Rhubarb was available in spring from late March to about early May. Then it would slow with the heat, and the strawberries would start to come in, which is when we ate strawberry rhubarb pie.
Mildly laxative rhubarb has been both a medicinal and a fixture in European cooking for millenniums. It grew wild along the banks of the Volga River, which gives you an idea of the climate it prefers. Cool and dampish. It thrives in the northern states — Lanesboro MN has an annual rhubarb festival – and Canada. We’re about the southernmost boundary for its cultivation here in Zone 7 Kent County.
Beware: The leaves contain the toxin, oxalate, which makes them poisonous.
For years I remained ill disposed toward rhubarb, but was given a clump of the roots/rhizomes for my first garden by a well-meaning older gardener. He was a neighbor and would have checked had I pitched it. So, I figured if the plant didn’t die, I’d better figure out how to make it at least palatable. In that search, I discovered I could turn rhubarb into something that we’d actually enjoy, and now freeze quarts of it each year for winter desserts and conserves. Rhubarb and orange crisp, rhubarb and walnut conserve, rhubarb chutney, rhubarb muffins and rhubarb pudding cake, and there are a bunch of savory rhubarb recipes that I want to try listed in the rhubarb festival website below.
Rhubarb is gaining enough popularity that I’ve even had some stolen. Several years ago, I dug a clump of my own rhubarb roots as a gift to a friend who had lived in Canada and loved the stuff. We met one day at the little parking lot along 301 outside Barclay, left her car with the pot of rhubarb roots in it sitting in the shade of the car and went off to play. When we got back, the car was untouched, but the rhubarb was gone. Whodathunk?
Rhubarb Conserve
4 cups chopped fresh rhubarb
1 orange
4 Tblsp Cointreau or other orange liqueur
2 cups sugar, less if you use brown sugar
2/3 cup chopped walnuts
dash salt
Zest the orange and squeeze the juice into the pot with all the other ingredients. Simmer all until it’s conserve consistency and bubbly. To preserve, put in sterilized jars and seal with sterilized lids. Extension services recommend that after sealing, you process the jars in a water bath for 10 minutes. Use on toast, as a filling for sponge cakes, in bread pudding or warm on ice cream.
The links below include the festival recipes, which offer a terrific range of options, both sweet and savory. Another goes to a Bonny Wolf rhubarb story on NPR. Bonny herself will be here this Friday and Saturday at Chestertown’s Locovore Lit Fest to talk about rhubarb and a whole lot more. Come on out and savor.
https://www.rhubarbfestival.org/recipes.php
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5306529
https://www.plantea.com/rhubarb.htm#rhubarbrecipes
https://onewholeclove.typepad.com/one_whole_clove/2006/05/rhubarb.html
https://southernfood.about.com/od/fruitcrisps/r/bl30623m.htm