A Rhubarb Revelation

I have to admit, rhubarb has never been on my radar much. I know what it is—those celery-like stalks that are rosy pink-red and show up at the market each spring. I know people make rhubarb pie, often pairing it with strawberry. I've eaten it here and there, but it never made much impact. Perhaps the strawberries covered it up.

I even know what rhubarb looks like growing, though the first time I saw it, on a visit to Linnaea Farm in Canada, I was surprised. I didn’t expect it to have such large, dark green, umbrella-like leaves. I expected them to be wispy, be more like celery.

But buy rhubarb and take it home with me? It just never happened. Not sure why.

Then, a few weeks ago, I was at a party—a potluck of food lovers—where all the dishes were delicious. There was homemade gravlax, the best egg salad ever, and pulled pork that had simmered long until it fell into shreds (the recipe is going in this book, make sure to check it out; I was craving it days later). 

Then there was a small blue dish filled with thickish sauce the color of rose petals. It was rhubarb compote.



The compote was served with Greek yogurt and it was a dreamy combination. The tart-sweet flavor of the compote and the richness of the yogurt created a wonderful interplay. It was just the sort of dish I used to wonder about when I read old-fashioned novels as a child. Compote—doesn’t it sound Victorian? It’s a dish for people who eat blancmange and drink cordials.

I read a lot of old-fashioned novels, the food always fascinated me.

So the other day, when one of my favorite farmers showed up at the market after his winter off, I bought a pound of rhubarb. It’s early in the season and he didn’t have much to sell, but the rhubarb was there, peeking out it’s rosy-green stalks. Rhubarb is a flirt of spring, the first pink thing to emerge from the earth. It seems half fruit, half vegetable. A promise of what is to come.

I took a bundle home with me.



The compote recipe comes from Dana Cree, a local pastry chef here in Seattle who is currently working her magic at Poppy, Jerry Traunfeld's new restaurant on Capitol Hill. Her most recent addition to the dessert menu is banana ice cream served atop warm date cake with butterscotch. The mere thought of that makes me want to dash up the hill for dessert alone.

But we’re talking about rhubarb here.

The rhubarb stalk is—if any of you are as unfamiliar with it as I was—tart and filled with water. It's a bit fiberous. You could eat it raw, but it will make you pucker. What you want to do is cut it into small pieces, which look like Christmas gone pastel in lovely shades of pink and light green.



Then toss it with sugar, until it sparkles like a winter forest.



And put it in a pot with some butter to stew.



It takes less than fifteen minutes until the rhubarb has gone soft, releasing its juices and starting to thicken. You’ll be surprised how fast it happens.

What you get is a dish of soft pink sauce, a mixture of tart and sweet that is so entrancing it will be hard to stop at only one small bowl. Fairly soon you’ll realize that you have wasted years of your life ignoring the rhubarb and this was a silly mistake.



You’ll also realize that you need to go back to the market and get more rhubarb. You’re going to be spending a lot more time with the first pink of spring.

This compote is lovely on it’s own, or served alongside yogurt as Matthew and Laurie did at the party. I would also recommend it over pancakes, waffles, or French toast. I might try cooking it down to see if I could get it to jam—and I'm definitely going to be trying this recipe, for rhubarb-ginger jam. 

It really is a treat. And it was gone, far too soon.



I’ll admit I messed about with Dana’s recipe (I cannot help myself). I reduced the sugar and butter and added a bit of scraped vanilla bean in the hopes of imparting a slight vanilla flavor. My measurements are below, but take a look at the instructions and original recipe on Dana’s site. She’s the pastry chef, after all.

Dana Cree’s Rhubarb Compote Recipe

My recipe makes a compote that is probably more sour than most people will like. It skates the line of being too tart and almost gives you that funny twinge behind your molars. I liked it that way and decided not to add any more sugar, but I like sour things and not everyone else does.

1 lb. rhubarb
1 tsp butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 vanilla bean, already scraped for another use

If you want to know where I am, I'll be at the market, buying more rhubarb.

How about you? Do you like rhubarb? What do you do with it?