Be Bop a Re Bop

Rheum rhabarbarum

This is not a rave. This is rhubarb.

Those of you not native to this part of California are likely to have no idea how exceptional was your fortune last weekend, when Max offered you rhubarb pie for dessert. The item was tucked away unassumingly in the bottom right corner of the menu, awaiting only those devoted enough to their meal to look past the ubiquitous LICS for the chance at something new.

If you hail from regions nearer the Mason-Dixon, or listen much to public radio, you’re aware that rhubarb is regarded by most of the country as a homespun commodity, on a par with baked beans and scalloped potatoes. But here in SoCal it seems to be nearly as rare as truffles–and the travesty is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Rhubarb thrills to our climate–once it breaks its winter dormancy, the plant prefers temperatures around 74°. It can easily withstand water shortage, and while it likes the sun, its intense magenta color and acerbic taste are stimulated by the cold of early morning and nightfall.

Rhubarb was used medicinally by the Chinese as a purgative–the name of the genus may come from the Greek verb rheo, which means “to flow.” (The name may alternatively come from “Rha,” the ancient name of the river Volga, along whose banks the plant have grown for centuries–but that is Russian rhubarb, and not our bag.) The purgative properties come from eating the roots and leaves, which are mildly poisonous.

Marco Polo spread the fame of Chinese rhubarb into Europe, where Venetian pharmacists took up its use to cure fevers, obesity, and venereal diseases. For a time, rhubarb was more expensive than saffron or opium. It was planted in Italy in 1608; in 1777, an English apothecary started a plantation in Banbury, Oxfordshire, which remains to this day. An unknown farmer from Maine was the first recorded cultivator of rhubarb in the United States, around 1790-1800; he passed it on to growers in Massachusetts, and by 1822 it was available in groceries. A common Scandinavian candy is a stalk of rhubarb dipped in sugar. The British counties of Wakefield, Leeds and Morley are known as the Rhubarb Triangle, where tradition dictates that the first rhubarb of the year be harvested by candlelight in dark sheds.

Rhubarb’s debut on the Linkery menu was provoked by the advent of a new force in the kitchen. Ian, who comes from Boston with a penchant for baking, saw Michael rendering lard and asked if we ever used it to make pastry. Like any righteous pedagogue would, Michael parried the question by asking, “Is that an offer?” The dialectic that followed is still being translated from the original Greek–it included the imperative of Becker Lane kidney leaf lard, which is harder than the back-sourced lardo you know and love–but the outcome was a firm resolution for strawberry-rhubarb pie.

Which leads us to inquire into traditions–why is rhubarb so relentlessly dogged by the strawberry? If, like me, you thought it was strawberries doing rhubarb a favor, foiling the acidity with their concentrated sweetness, you were prejudiced by your senses, Adeimantus. The acidity of rhubarb stabilizes the red pigment of strawberries, allowing them to stay vibrantly, appetizingly roseate when cooked. Try cooking strawberries alone and you’ll see what it means to miss rhubarb.