Ready to crumble

IT’S no surprise that rhubarb did not take up its role as the quintessentially English dessert until the end of the 18th century, when sugar became cheaper and more available.

For no matter what else you may pair with rhubarb — orange juice, ginger, berries, apples, rosewater, vanilla — you also will be adding sugar or honey to this tart fruit.

Once sugar was readily available, the likes of Hannah Glasse, Eliza Acton and Isabella Beeton, came up with recipes such as curate’s pudding, and rhubarb was away.

In Yorkshire before World War II, in a triangle between Wakefield, Leeds and Bradford, there were as many as 200 farms growing forced rhubarb, which was ready in time for midwinter Christmas.

It was sent by train to London at the rate of 200 tons a night.

The technique of forcing was said to have been discovered by accident at Chelsea Physic Garden (long before rhubarb become dessert it was a medicine) when a plant was accidentally covered and the resulting stems found to be tender and less tart than those grown in the open.

It’s a method that can be managed by the home gardener by placing a bucket or terracotta pot over the rhubarb plant about to burst into spring growth, but in Yorkshire it is done commercially in huge darkened sheds.

Pickers collect the stalks by the light of candles held up in metal holders and no music or talkback radio disturbs the silence as they gather the crop.

Visitors to the sheds talk of an almost mystical experience.

The plants for forcing grow outside for two years without being picked and are then moved inside to just sit on the floor and use their own stored energy to send up stems in the dark.

The popularity of rhubarb was hugely set back by the war. It was deemed a wasteful use of coal to heat the shed for forced rhubarb and the hardy outdoor stuff did not appeal so much in a time of sugar rationing.

Some in the shrinking Rhubarb Triangle hung in, and now a mere 12 growers are enjoying the rhubarb renaissance.

Historian, the late Mary Prior, wrote Rhubarbaria: Recipes for Rhubarb in 2009.

She said rhubarb was part of her girlhood in New Zealand, and in the Shetland Islands, where she later spent her summers, it was “almost compulsory in local gardens” according to the local council.

Rhubarb was part of my New Zealand girlhood too, however, like the rest of the world I waited until well into the ’90s to find an appreciation for it.

I can attest to its independent hardiness: four years after my father died, rhubarb was the last plant standing in his abandoned vegetable garden.

Rhubarb, which originated in Siberia, rather likes Yorkshire — and Tasmania, where Australia’s biggest rhubarb grower Jerrod Nichols, covers hectares of ground with them at Scottsdale.

Jerrod got into rhubarb ahead of Simplot pulling out of Scottsdale, and putting paid to his growing peas for the processor.

Rhubarb, he figured, was not sold frozen or canned, so would not have to compete with cheap imports.

Wind and hail are the biggest enemies of the crop. Jerrod might put wind tunnels to use but has no plans that I know of to grow rhubarb in the dark.

Perfectly ripe rhubarb can have green stems of course, but even the reddest stems to do not match the pretty pinkness of the forced stems.

My favourite quick way to use rhubarb cheats a little on colour by us using redcurrant jelly (or any berry jam or jelly I have to hand) create a blush and do the sweetening. I mix two to three tablespoons of jelly or jam with a couple of tablespoons of warm water and then add a good bunch of chopped rhubarb to the pot.

Cover and cook gently (so as not to turn it into a mush) for about 10 minutes. Off the heat, add about 30g of chopped glace or crystallised ginger and it is ready for breakfast cereal, a rice pudding (especially one with a few cardamom pods thrown in) or to join some apple underneath a crumble.

Rhubarb, which originated in Siberia, rather likes Yorkshire — and Tasmania.