Ssshhh! Listen carefully. They reckon if you’re very quiet you can actually hear the ‘popping’ of rhubarb stalks pushing from their buds in the moist dark forcing sheds of Yorkshire. Yes, it’s forced rhubarb season and along with a large posse of fellow rhubarb addicts, I’ve been rifling my recipes for ways to make the most of this blushingly beautiful, tinglingly sweet,fleetingly available ingredient.
Although its popularity is undeniable – look no further than the food festival held in its honour – rhubarb causes schisms even in the most foodie-fied households. I thought it did in mine until I made this deeply comforting magic pudding. It turns out that my husband doesn’t hate rhubarb per se: what he hates is the yellowy-green stringy stuff grown on allotments across the land in the summer, and not the succulent, vivid pink forced stalks grown in Yorkshire’s at this time of year.
We have happenstance to thank for this tricksy way to grow rhubarb. A gardener in the Chelsea Physic Garden in 1817 found that when he accidentally left rhubarb plants covered with soil the stems shot upwards and grew sweet and tender. This new method of growing rhubarb, combined with falling sugar prices, induced a little bit of rhubarb mania. The cool damp climate of Yorkshire proved ideal for producing the most tender and flavourful stalks, and in the second half the 19th century a forced rhubarb industry took off. At one time there were more than 200 producers in the area between Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield, transporting their strawberry-pink harvests down to London’s Borough Market on the ‘Rhubarb Express’.
The number of producers has now dwindled to 12 but production is largely the same: rhubarb plants are grown outside in the fields for a couple of years and subjected to a number of frosts, before being transferred to warm sheds in November and replanted in utter darkness. Deprivation of food and light forces the crowns to throw out stalks incredibly quickly. Traditionally, it was even picked by candlelight so as not to interrupt the growing.
With a little patience and tenacity, you can try growing forced rhubarb yourself by placing a large pot or dustbin over the rhubarb crown, making sure there are no holes to let any light in. To speed growing even more you can insulate the outside of the pot with straw.
Anyway, given the magical nature of this ingredient (I want to say fruit but we all know it’s veg don’t we?) I wanted to make something similarly enchanting. And there’s nothing more magical than self-saucing puddings: what goes into the oven as a dish full of batter transmogrifies into a golden-topped sponge with a deliciously saucy, gooey bottom. My mum used to make chocolate and lemon versions of this for us as children, and although I think they came from packets, it’s easy to conjure at home. Don’t ask me about the science - all you need to know is that you get a lovely sponge cake on a bed of heavenly erubescent sauce.
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