Rhubarb: The Good Celery
The belle of Deep North spring
If you keep up with food stuff at all, you know that rhubarb is everywhere, especially here in the Upper Midwest. It’s rhubarb season, and bakeries like Laune Bread and Dahlia here in the Twin Cities are making a bunch of pastries and sweets with the tart pink fruit (or is it a vegetable? More on that later). We got it in our CSA this week, and will for the next couple of weeks while it is in season, and I’m so excited to use it up well!
As a kiddo, my house was on a one-acre lot with a double row of pine trees around two sides of the property, with perennial chives and rhubarb popping up every year around this time. I loved being outside when I was young, making forts for my toys, reading up in trees, snacking on the white part of grass, nibbling on chives, and admiring the huge rhubarb leaves in that one corner of the backyard. I didn’t cook or bake a ton when I was a kid so I don’t have a specific beloved rhubarb treat that I love to make now, but the imagery of the sprawling four feet of the rhubarb plant is very clear in my memory. I planted two rhubarb plants this year in my garden in hopes of recreating the huge bounty of my childhood yard.
Rhubarb is popular in the Deep North, partly because this is the area where many Scandinavian immigrants ended up when they came to the United States. The climate is really comparable, so the cultivation techniques and weather // seasons felt familiar. Rhubarb grows well in parts of the U.K. too where they do something called forced cultivation in dark sheds which are packed with rhubarb and if you stand quietly, you can hear the rhubarb grow. In Nordic countries, rhubarb is often grown next to saunas, and inspired the Marimekko x IKEA collab that’s chock full of rhubarb prints and things you’d need for a sauna experience, except for a sauna itself which was only a little disappointing. I think an IKEA sauna would honestly sell pretty well!
To actually be enjoyable, you need to add quite a bit of sweetness to rhubarb to balance out the flavors, which is really tart. This is why strawberry rhubarb is such a popular flavor! Also strawberries and rhubarb are often in season at the same time, so they are natural companions. It’s considered a vegetable, especially when you think about the stringy outside layer being similar to celery. It was first used medicinally in Scandinavia, then as a decorative plant, and finally as an ingredient in the kitchen. Now rhubarb is considered a fruit since it is used similarly to a fruit in baking.
As an adult who loves to cook, I feel fortunate to get rhubarb in our CSA box for a few weeks of the year. It makes me feel connected to my Nordic heritage, and to my childhood self which is very “in” right now. I’ve cooked and baked with it a lot in the last five years, and it’s one of my favorites.
The Best Ways to Eat // Drink Rhubarb
Straight out of the ground, dipped in a bowl of sugar: dip, take a crunchy bite, dip, repeat
Rhubarb simple syrup (equal parts sugar & water, plus a bunch of cubed rhubarb and a splash of lemon juice) mixed with club soda or tonic for rhubarb soda OR added to lemonade
Compote over vanilla ice cream with a few pieces of flaky sea salt - I love saving the part I strain out of the simple syrup
Things I Like
Downtime Substack (formerly Girls’ Night In Newsletter)
The concept of generous exclusion, which applies to work and social situations
Barbiecore outfits - I’m preparing for the Barbie movie premiere! Who wants to go with me?!
How to use pickle juice in a jar - pickle juice cocktails // mocktails?!
I hope you enjoy some of the delicious pink vegetable this week! You know I’ll be making things with the good celery all week long!
May your week be gentle and may you eat well. 🌲🥣