Forced rhubarb, Elvis Costello, 3 testicles, a Walnut Whip and an excellent cake
Abundance: Thursday 8 February 2024
In a northern shed - right now, in the warm, in the dark - rhubarb is squeaking like stolen shoes.
In an unlikely fluke, some bright 19th century spark recognised that their few square miles of Yorkshire enjoyed the perfect coming together of rainfall, soil, and the waste wool, ashes and soot from local industry for growing rhubarb.
Perhaps the same lively mind also devised the method for producing the earliest, sweetest rhubarb that has made this triangle of Yorkshire so famous. When dormant in winter, rhubarb plants are lifted and brought into warm sheds. Fooled by the heat into thinking it’s spring but denied the sunlight to photosynthesise, the plants convert their starch reserves into ‘now’ energy (sugar) and grow to meet the imposter season. Sweet, pale pink stems with yellow leaves result. And very fine they are too.
My rhubarb shows no sign of squeaking. Growing slow and steady even in this peculiarly mild late winter, it will be a while yet until I can pull a few fat, taut, crimson stems.
Next February, my plants will be established enough that I can replicate those northern sheds by placing a rhubarb forcer1 over a couple of crowns; if idleness doesn’t get the better of me, I might even shovel manure around it to further lift the temperature and give me sweet, vivid stems a month or more ahead of even the earliest unforced varieties. The downside is after harvesting these forced stems, you have to allow the plant to recover for the rest of the year.
At our last home, we’d do this most years and my daughter - a rhubarb-lover like her dad - would help us pick it after school. I’d lift the heavy terracotta forcer off for her to get in there low with the perfect twisting technique that leaves the plant undamaged.
This time next year she’ll have flown the nest, but I’m hoping I can tempt her back for a well timed weekend of forced rhubarb picking and making the cake - below - that she’s just helped demolish. If not, I shall have to buy a box of Walnut Whips and hope that works instead. Any excuse.