It’s usually around January that we really start to miss those mellow fruits of autumn. The bad news is that it’ll be some time before any of them return. The good news is that there’s a vegetable in season this month that does an excellent impression of one.
Rhubarb was originally a native of Siberia. It’s impervious to the cold and, importantly, lack of light – even our coldest winters are positively balmy as far as rhubarb is concerned, so it thrives in Britain. Since the 1800s, growers have been taking advantage of the plant’s love of our mild climate by growing it in a rather mysterious way.
‘Forcing’ rhubarb involves growing the plants outside but then moving them into long, dark sheds in late autumn, just after the first frosts. Astonishingly in this day and age, the sheds are still lit by candlelight so that light levels are as low as possible. Rhubarb sheds are an eerie place. If you stand quietly you can actually hear the rhubarb ‘talking’ as it creaks while growing.
The dark, warm and moist conditions trick the plants into thinking they are covered by thick Siberian snow. As a result, photosynthesis stops and the plants put all their energy into growing long, slender stems which are a vivid pink (rather than green). The first forced rhubarb harvest takes place in mid-to-late January and it continues through to mid-spring when the field rhubarb season starts. (The two types of rhubarb are actually exactly the same plant, just grown differently.)
West Yorkshire’s ‘Rhubarb Triangle’ once produced more than 90 per cent of the world’s forced rhubarb and, at the peak of production, whole trains ran from Yorkshire to London carrying the rhubarb to market. Although sales haven’t quite continued at those levels, it’s still undoubtedly a success story – Yorkshire forced rhubarb has been given Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status, putting it in the same league as Champagne, Camembert cheese and Melton Mowbray pork pies.
Try: Rhubarb and almond tart (p. 37)