‘Should it have separated like this?’ I asked after peering into the fridge at four glass beakers containing a murky orange jelly topped by a gnarled-looking mousse of greyish hue.
‘It hadn’t separated when it went in,’ said Mrs H, resentfully. It didn’t taste impossibly bad. Just odd. The mousse had a curious texture, like fibre-reinforced resin. It might have been an early experiment in making plastic. It was edible, just about, but not mousse as we know it. The jelly part was tasty but very hard indeed. ‘Maybe I used too much gelatine,’ groaned Mrs H. ‘I used a new kind of gelatine that gives directions for making a litre and I only wanted a pint. I sat there for ages trying to work it out and I think I got it wrong.’
‘Do you want to give it another go?’
‘No.’
Mrs H thought she might have better luck with savoury rhubarb dishes. Currently, the use of rhubarb as a savoury is very fashionable in trendy restaurants, where, of course, the chefs stick to the wimpy, pink stuff. ‘Rhubarb-carrot relish sounds nice,’ she said, poring through Rhubarb – More Than Just Pies. But it wasn’t. Considering the tastiness of the two main ingredients, which were boiled separately in salty water, puréed, then mixed together with butter, the determined blandness of the rhubarb-carrot relish was a disappointment. Maybe they like things bland in Alberta.
‘It is slightly reminiscent of aubergine dip,’ I said encouragingly. Helped along with Tabasco, it became somewhat more toothsome, but Mrs H would not be consoled. ‘Into the bin,’ she said.
The nadir of her rhubarb experimentation came with rhubarb relish, consisting of diced rhubarb along with the usual suspects – brown sugar, vinegar, chopped onion and spices. The instructions could barely be simpler: ‘Combine all ingredients in a large saucepan and boil until thickened.’ So what could go wrong?
‘The postman,’ said Mrs H.
‘The postman?’
‘Yes. I did the relish and I was just putting it into jars when the postman rang at the door with lots of parcels for you. While he was giving them to me, a woman came up and said she wanted him to take a letter because the postbox had been sealed. He said he wasn’t supposed to take it…’
‘What’s this got to do with rhubarb?’ I asked, feeling we were straying from the point somewhat.
‘Hang on! A long discussion followed about where there was an open postbox. The woman said, “I don’t know where that is,” and the postman reluctantly accepted the letter. Eventually, I brought the parcels back into the house and thought “Oh, hell.” I knew something had gone very wrong when I couldn’t lift my bailing jug from the bottom of the pan. Look, there it is, stuck fast.’
Yes, there it was. I pulled at the jug. It was like trying to lift the Chrysler Building from the Manhattan bedrock. With the assistance of a kettle of boiling water, I managed to pry the jug from the world’s toughest relish. I turned to Mrs H expecting grateful thanks, but all I got was a glum look. Her mouth turned down at both ends like a banana. She pointed at the jars of ‘relish’ that she had filled before her jar got stuck. The contents were akin to bitumen. It was a sort of rhubarb toffee and might even have been chewable if I’d been able to get any out, but I didn’t want to risk my fillings on it.
A few days later, Mrs H returned to the fray. She amended the relish recipe with more onion, more rhubarb and a spoonful of ground allspice, but her major refinement concerned the cooking technique. ‘Instead of “boil until thickened”, I brought it to the boil then turned it down to a very low simmer and reduced the mixture. Every time I smelled it, I gave it a stir.’
‘So how long did that take?’
‘I put it on at 8:30 a.m. and finished it at 3:15 p.m.’
The result of the seven-hour simmer was a sticky, brown goo. Sweet-sour but wonderfully rounded, it was excellent. The chunks of rhubarb radiated a profound flavour that tinged on the palate for ages. Maybe it would improve with maturing, but a vintage version of Mrs H’s rhubarb relish is unlikely because it is so addictive. Particularly when consumed with pork pie, the contents of a jar can magically disappear in a matter of minutes.
Her next effort concerned a rhubarb sauce intended for pork chops. Made with red wine, vinegar and chicken stock, it looked slightly dubious to me. Fruit with meat (apple with pork, cherries with duck, etc.) is one of my blind spots. I know I should like it, but I feel instinctively drawn to the mustard pot. ‘I don’t think I’ll bother with the sauce,’ I announced.
Mrs H took a mouthful of the combination and asserted, ‘Well – ner, ner, ner – it goes quite well with the pork.’
After risking a taste, I had to admit that it did. The sharpness of the sauce, which the wine had made ruby-red, was a perfect foil for the pork chop. Even when the chop had vanished, the sauce was pretty good. Mrs H scribbled in my notebook: ‘Mr H said he didn’t want any rhubarb on his pork chops, thank you, but he ended up nicking a great spoonful from the serving bowl.’
Even better was her rendition of Persian khoresh, a stew with rhubarb and shoulder of lamb. You may recall that the Persians regarded rhubarb as a holy vegetable, and going by the taste of this they were not far out. ‘It’s been simmering on top of the stove for about seven hours,’ said Mrs H. ‘The rhubarb only goes in for the last quarter of an hour.’ Each forkful delivered contrasting flavours – the sweetness of the lamb, the tartness of the rhubarb, sweetness again with caramelised onions – which were magically complementary. ‘Mmm, this is nice,’ I gushed.
After this triumph, I felt it was time for me to have a go at a savoury rhubarb dish. I tried a Gary Rhodes recipe for steamed oysters with rhubarb. Though I am possibly the world’s greatest oyster lover, certainly one of the greediest, I was a little hesitant about this weird combination. But Rhodes points out that a sauce of chopped shallots in red wine vinegar (known as mignonette) is a traditional accompaniment to oysters, so he came up with rhubarb softened in red wine vinegar with a touch of sugar as a partner to steamed, buttery oysters.
Inevitably, he calls for ‘3–4 sticks of forced rhubarb’, but I used thin sticks of the ordinary kind. The recipe is a bit fiddly for my liking. Even with shortcuts, I found myself cussing when it came to putting a teensy-weeny pile of rhubarb in each empty shell and placing a steamed, buttery oyster on top of each pile. ‘Bloody fiddly, cheffy nonsense.’ (I give you an expurgated version.) But, yes, I admit it, the sweetness of the oysters and the sourness of the rhubarb worked remarkably well together.
My final bash at rhubarb came from Robin Lane Fox, biographer of Alexander the Great, who presumably knew a thing or two about rhubarb. According to him (Fox, not Alexander), rhubarb stewed with ‘masses of caster sugar’, then mixed with the grated rind and juice of an orange and left overnight, is not only ‘the supreme recipe’ but ‘the true king of all English puddings’. It has a very good acidy flavour, but maybe it’s more of a delicious accompaniment to stuff like blancmange or yogurt than a pudding as such.
‘Mmm. It’s very refreshing,’ said Mrs H. ‘A bit like eating those Haliborange tablets I had as a child.’ This was a new one on me, since I had a Haliborange-free childhood, but it was evidently high praise. ‘Lovely.’
She also astonished me by reminiscing about another rhubarb dish. ‘I rather miss those days when you were always pulling huge, patched pies from the oven.’ Mrs H wanted her own Proustian moment.
Mrs H’s recipe for lamb khoresh with rhubarb
We make this dish for friends for informal suppers or lunches and it always produces lots of oooh’s and ahh’s and satisfied slurping noises. Shoulder of lamb has more fat than other cuts but