There’s nothing better than a well-made rhubarb pie and at Country Style we make many thousand a week during the early spring.
The contrast between rich pastry and the sharpness of the rhubarb is very satisfying, even before you add a heavy dollop of creamy yellow custard!
At the moment forced, or “champagne” rhubarb, is the ingredient of choice with the fanciest chefs (forced rhubarb is available January until Mid March). At Brassiere Blanc in Leeds the chefs are serving rhubarb tarts; a classic rhubarb fool; and a rhubarb Cranachan. While last year, Rick Stein featured a rather more complicated dish: “roast foie gras, new season Champagne rhubarb, white miso, fennel and black truffle salad”!
But despite it’s current role in the gastro-limelight rhubarb is a traditional Yorkshire delicacy and during the season in the dark and warm of the forcing sheds, tens of thousands of rhubarb plants are growing so fast that you can hear the snap and pop of their opening buds. The stems are still picked by candle-light so that they stay in the dark and keep growing.
Rhubarb growing became established in Yorkshire because there was plenty of coal – to heat the sheds – plus a good train service to rush the tender crop to London. The heighday of the “rhubarb triangle” (Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell – but frequently incorrectly referred to as being located between Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield) came at the end of the last century when rhubarb was the wonder food of its day and much prized for remarkable purgative properties.
Only last week Look North carried a news story about new reaseach which shows thateating baked rhubarb could help fight cancer.
Whatever the medicinal benefits I think I will still be opting for rhubarb pie because of the way it tastes!