Potential rhubarb shortage may leave chefs in a pickle

THERE is panic in the rhubarb triangle. Across the pocket of West Yorkshire that produces the nation’s crop of forced pink stalks, growers are looking anxiously at their plants and praying for frost. Nurturing the early rhubarb prized for its sweet-sour flavour and wild Barbara-Cartland’s-hat colour is a tricky process and the mild, wet winter is threatening to wipe out this year’s harvest.

“It’s so warm the plants think it’s spring,” mourns Janet Oldroyd Hulme, who runs the biggest rhubarb farm in the UK and has been in and out of forcing sheds since 1979. “The roots should look dead and lifeless when they come in for forcing, but we’ve been getting some with little sprigs of the new growth already starting. I’ve never seen that in all my life and we don’t want it. It means that the rhubarb isn’t really forced and so it doesn’t have that special taste.”

Left to its own devices rhubarb, which is technically a vegetable, grows into the hefty, greenish-streaked, giant-leafed monster which squats, unloved, in the corner of the garden. But in the area of Yorkshire between Bradford, Leeds and Wakefield known as the rhubarb, or pink, triangle, where the nearby Pennines usually create the ideal wet, frosty climate, the plant is nurtured outside for two years. In December it is brought into a gloomy candle-lit shed for forcing. This change of environment shocks it into sending out tender pink shoots with a distinctive sherbet flavour, ready to hit the shops straight after Christmas. But not this year.

In the days before winter fruit salads of Brazilian mangoes and Polish blueberries, forced rhubarb was in huge demand. Up until 1966, a special train, the Rhubarb Express, sped from Yorkshire to London carrying, at peak times, 200 tons a day. And after a dip in the 1970s, when many of the old forcing sheds were turned over to producing mushrooms, demand picked up again. There are now 11 remaining producers clustered around the M62.

They are growing a product of international standing. In 2010, Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb, grown in sheds using traditional methods, won European PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) status, putting it on a par with Parma ham and Cornish pasties. This move, spearheaded by producer Oldroyd Hulme, was designed to differentiate the real thing from foreign imports, which use gibberellic acid to mimic the effects of frost and get the crop to market early. It also marks the Yorkshire crop, also known as “champagne rhubarb”, out from the coarser outdoor-grown version, which can be farmed anywhere.

But without the frost, forced rhubarb loses its taste advantage. One Yorkshire grower, Jonathan Westwood from Thorpe Farm in Wakefield, has already resorted to gibberellic acid for his 150-acre crop. There are fears that others may be forced to do the same.

The timing could not be worse. At its nadir, stringy rhubarb was the earnest vicar’s wife’s crop of choice, to be made into a viciously acidic jam, served with lumpy custard or, even worse, used as the basis for a Reggie Perrin’s son-in-law’s style of home-made wine. But over the past decade, rhubarb, especially the forced variety, has come into its own. It ticks many foodie boxes: it is produced in the UK (although supermarkets rely on supplies from Holland and Germany when Yorkshire lets them down), it has been eaten here since it was introduced from Siberia in the 1800s, it looks fantastic with its sci-fi pink and yellow-green colour scheme, and arrives at a time of year when everything else is in the greengrocer’s is an import or a turnip.

The catering industry loves it. According to Oldroyd Hulme, who is one of Rick Stein’s Food Heroes: “We’re back to supplying all sorts of top-end hotels and restaurants.” It pops up in cocktails: the barman at Jamie Oliver’s 15 in Cornwall makes a creamy rhubarb and vodka concoction with the left-over juice from stewed rhubarb. It appears in the repertoires of top chefs: Simon Hopkinson makes a simple crumble, Antony Worrall Thompson serves pork chops with a braised rhubarb sauce. On the TV series Britain’s Best Dish, Jake Watkins made a fiendishly difficult pyramid of dried rhubarb, rhubarb compote, crispy filo pastry and ginger jelly. A proudly Yorkshire Indian restaurant in Wakefield, the Bollywood Lounge, even adds it to the chicken curry.

A Waitrose advert featuring Delia Smith’s recipe for rhubarb and ginger crème brûlée caused nationwide shortages in 2010. But it is Nigella Lawson who has done the most to put forced rhubarb at the centre of the home-cooking canon. She is obsessed with the stuff. In her first book, How To Eat, the index for rhubarb lists Irish tarte tatin, pig’s bum (a steamed sponge she invented after a conversation with fellow addict Worral Thompson), rhubarb and muscat wine jelly (surely the campest dessert this side of Fanny Cradock), crumble, custard, ice-cream, trifle and a tricky-but-terribly-chic rhubarb meringue pie.

“It isn’t nostalgia that drives me – such puddings, such ingredients, were not a part of my childhood – or a kitsch longing for the retro-culinary repertoire. It’s the taste, the smell, the soft, fragrant bulky stickiness of this that seduces,” she writes. “Maybe it’s the relatively short season that makes it so attractive, but if it’s in the shops I want to cook with it.” If, Nigella, if…

RHUBARB CRUMBLE TARTS

Serves four to six

For the pastry

250g plain flour

50g icing sugar

15g unsalted butter

1 egg

1 egg yolk

For the filling

6 sticks of rhubarb, cut into 10cm pieces

280g sugar

Zest and juice of 1 orange

For the crumble

250g flour

200g butter

20g sugar

75g oats

Pink food colouring

To make the pastry

Sieve the flour and sugar together and pulse with the butter in a food processor until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Mix in the whole egg and knead gently until the dough comes together. Wrap in cling film and chill for 30 minutes. Once the pastry has chilled, pre-heat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6.

Roll the pastry out and line each tart mould. Trim the edges and cover the pastry with parchment paper before filling with baking beans. Bake for ten minutes then remove the paper and beans and bake for a further ten minutes.

Remove from the oven and brush with the egg yolk before setting aside for later.

To make the filling

Place the rhubarb, sugar, orange juice and zest in a pan and cook down slowly for 30 to 35 minutes to make a compote

To make the crumble

In a bowl, mix the flour and butter. Add the sugar and oats and a dash of food colouring to give a nice pastel pink colour then chill for 20 minutes. Place on a baking tray and bake in the oven at 200C/gas mark 6 for six to eight minutes until crispy.

To serve

Add the rhubarb compote to the tarts and cover with the crumble. Serve with a scoop of ice-cream on top.

Tom Kitchin