Rhubarb, tart and crisp

If the tomato is everyone’s favourite vegetable-that’s-really-a-fruit, rhubarb should be everyone’s favourite fruit-that’s-really-a-vegetable. Especially in spring, when there are precious few other fruits available.

We inherited a small rhubarb patch with our house, but the key word is small. Shaded by several trees, and suffering frequent insect attacks, it produces enough for only one small pie. And that’s in a good year. Fortunately, one of my husband’s colleagues has a lot more success with her plants. In fact, to hear her describe it, you’d think rhubarb was the pastry world’s answer to zucchini. Much to our benefit, she’s eager to share.

For me, the season’s first rhubarb dish always has to be a straight-up pie, tart, crumble or crisp. And no strawberries, please: while strawberry and rhubarb is a classic for a reason, rhubarb can stand just fine on its own, or with other accents.

The main characteristic of rhubarb, as anyone who’s made the mistake of biting into a freshly-picked stalk can tell you, is its intense sourness. The culprit here is oxalic acid, a compound also found in spinach and sorrel, and that may be involved in the toxicity of rhubarb leaves. Its tartness is usually balanced – and often overbalanced – with copious amounts of sugar, but also offers an opportunity to move rhubarb into the savoury kitchen, as a companion to lamb or the base for a chutney.

Because I spent so much of spring on the road, rhubarb season opened late for me this year. But it opened in style, with a simple crisp, the rhubarb’s flavour highlighted with orange zest and cardamom. Next came a strawberry-rhubarb crumble, which exhausted our supply. If we’re lucky, we’ll get one more bundle to play with before moving on to more summery fruit.