|Nutritional value
Calcium, vitamin C and fibre.
Storage
In the fridge lasts a couple of weeks.
Season
February to March when forced, May to August naturally.
Choose
Avoid bendy stalks.
Uses
Crumble, pie, chutney, fool, baked/stewed with honey, rosewater or sugar, compote.
Recipe
Soon
Freezes well cooked
Rhubarb, it's a little tart
Rheum rhabarbarum
An edible stem, but treated as a fruit. Mature leaves poisonous due to calcium oxalate.
Recorded for it medicinal uses as a laxative in 2700 BC China and first cultivated around 1573 in England as a medicinal root. In the 18th century it was forced and blanched, and sold as a winter vegetable on London markets. A popular choice in cool climates.
Apparently young stems used to be eaten raw, dipped in sugar - the forerunner of the sherbet dip?
Ours is local but much rhubarb is grown in the Rhubarb Triangle, West Yorkshire.