Local Foods: Rhubarb

Rhubarb, or Rheum rhaponticum, is a perennial plant native to the mountainous regions of China and Tibet. Althought rhubarb will grow in many temperate areas of the world, a fondness for rhubarb seems to be focused in a few small localized regions including England, Sweden, New England and the Great Lakes area. I'd never heard of strawberry-rhubarb pie until I moved to Vermont. Now I can't comprehend missing out on this fabulous vegetable.

Localized food choices are an integral part of our web of food culture, and are an important counterpoint to the increasingly uniform and lowest-common-denominator fast-food-chain and agribiz-supermarket-produce phenomenon. Enjoying locally-favored food species and varieties entertains your taste buds, expands your life experiences, and helps you to bond on a deep yet subtle cultural level with the surrounding community. Sharing rhubarb plant divisions, bringing rhubarb to elder friends who no longer garden, and savoring that rhubarb pie every year on father's day weekend, is part of what defines our local culture here as Vermonters. Where ever you live, your own local food culture, including locally grown or developed plant species and varieties, is just as important.

It may be that one of the attractions of rhubarb is its early-season appearance. It's huge, burdock-like leaves emerge about the same time as asparagus, and in fertile soil it quickly grows to elephantine proportions. Rhubarb is a heavy feeder, so dig a deep hole and fill it with manure and compost before starting a new plant. If your rhubarb likes its surroundings, it will need to be divided every 3 or 4 years, which gives you an opportunity to renew soil fertility with a fresh batch of compost.

Gardeners in some less stalwart communities may have an aversion to growing rhubarb because it's actually poisonous. Well, the leaves are considered poisonous, in that they have a high oxalic acid content. It's the crisp, red celery-like stalks that are eaten raw, stewed, baked into pies and muffins, canned in jam and jelly, and just about anywhere else you can throw it if you happen to be a rhubarb fan. Cut each stalk near its base, being careful not to cut into other adjacent stalks. Cut away the leaf at the end of the stalk, and either let it lie to help mulch in your rhubarb plant, or throw it in the compost pile. When the white fluffy flowers appear in early June, on stalks that will soon reach 6 feet high, I cut off the first few flowers to try to delay the end of the season. The common wisdom is that once those flowers escape you, usually by mid- to late- July, the stalks go bitter and should not be cut.

I'm rather crazy about rhubarb. I love its appearance, and grow it in the front flower bed as an edible ornamental. My favorite way to eat it is raw, with a light sprinkle of sea salt. On larger stalks, I peel off the stringy skin, but on smaller stalks I just eat that too. The sharp tang of the rhubarb stalk with the bite of salt is like a real-life version of those horrific sour gummy candy things that kids adore, except without the artificial neon color and chemical ingredients. Granted, this is not for the faint of heart or those with an aversion to aggressively-flavored foods.

For the gentler spirits, Victoria sauce is rhubarb, chopped and stewed with brown sugar, with optional raisins and honey, cooked until it is just the right texture to pour over ice cream, pudding or angel food cake. Rhubarb also subs in well for tart apples in pie and crisp recipes.

A local favorite in my neck of the woods is Rhubarb Punch. Rhubarb Punch has been something to look forward to every year at our January pot luck supper at my local spinning guild, courtesy of fellow guild member Christine Rising Turner. I've finally asked her for her recipe, which she's generously shared:

Rhubarb Punch

When rhubarb is in season, cut 1.5 pounds of stalks--about 6 to 8 1" wide stalks, 18" long. Cut these into 4-6" pieces and stick them straight in the freezer.

To make rhubarb juice, remove a bag of the stalks from the freezer, empty the contents of the bag into a saucepan and add 1 quart of water. 2/3 cup sugar, and a pinch of salt. Heat on medium until the rhubarb has stewed down to mush. Strain the juice through a fine sieve or cheesecloth to remove the stringy bits.

To turn one batch of juice into punch, add a 1/2 cup orange juice, 2T lemon juice, another pinch of salt, and 1 1-liter bottle of seltzer or ginger ale.

Fresh lemon slices make it even more festive, or during strawberry season, mash some strawberries with a sprinkle of sugar and pack it into ice cube trays and freeze it, then remove the cubes and store them in the freezer in a Zip-lock bag. Throw a handful of these into your rhubarb punch around New Year's as a reminder that you're half way back to rhubarb season once again.