More crowns…

Hints of red, pink and green – not garnets, rubies or emeralds, but rhubarb! Our single crown of rhubarb has gone crazy this year and produced more stems than ever before. Maybe it sensed the demise of the asparagus. We had eight crowns of that and only one produced anything this year so they have been dug up. But rhubarb is a bit like Marmite – people seem to fall into 2 distinct categories, they either really like it or really, really dislike it. Technically it’s a vegetable and was originally used for medicinal purposes but now we more commonly use it in pies or crumbles. This week I used it in Sugared Rhubarb Windows for the Cake Friday brigade (the recipe is on the website and there are pictures on the FB page). The stems aren’t difficult to pull away from the crown, then the leaves need to be cut off as they are inedible containing high levels of oxalic acid. Eaten raw, the stems are very sour, but I remember dipping them into sugar as a child and munching merrily on them! A tall terracotta bell jar can be placed over the early shoots to force their growth…I’ve got one but always forget to use it!