Forced rhubarb
Rhubarb has large fan shaped leaves and long, green edible stalks which are commonly cooked with sugar to make pies and other desserts. One type of rhubarb is grown in the dark to produce longer, rosier stalks and this is called forced rhubarb.
A In the north of England, a cold winter is good news for some and not just snowmen and woolly hat makers. According to Yorkshire farmer David Westwood, this year’s forced rhubarb is the best for years. Westwood, a softly spoken Yorkshiremen should know. He’s been growing and selling rhubarb for 62 years since he started picking on the farm aged 11. His son Jonathan works on the farm too, making him the sixth generation of the Westwoods to grow the pink stems of petioles as they are otherwise known.
B We meet at his farm a few miles from the city of Wakefield which with the cities of Bradford and Leeds form the three points of the Rhubarb Triangle, the heart of the British rhubarb industry. ‘It doesn’t grow as well anywhere else,’ insists Westwood. He has a number of theories as to why this is. The loam soil on a clay base is perfect for the roots or crowns which rhubarb grows from. In Victorian times – the mid to late 1800s – when rhubarb’s popularity was at its peak the local coal mines provided cheap fuel for heating the sheds a crucial part of the forcing process which involves depriving the plants of light as they develop. At the same time the effluence from the industry enriched the soil for farmers. On top of that according to Westwood the high levels of pollution in the air would have been ideal for the rhubarb as rhubarb loves soot.
C Westwood’s farm produces both the greenish outdoor rhubarb the kind that grows well in gardens all over the country and the startingly pink forced rhubarb. It’s this that is the cream of the crop the upper class of the rhubarb family. Forced rhubarb is the one that’s most likely to convert rhubarb haters who’ve been traumatised by harshly flavoured school pies made from green overgrown outdoor stems. The slender magenta spears, with a sherbet-tangy flavour and delicate texture are a far cry from that coarse bitter stuff. It’s also a rare local fruit (although technically a vegetable) at a time when imports dominate and a welcome splash of color in the drab winter months. No wonder chefs and food writers have fallen in love with forced rhubarb al over again. It’s enjoying a remarkable renaissance for only 20 years ago it was in such decline that Westwood one of the last 12 growers left from a peak of 2000, was considering abandoning it.
D There are certainly simpler ways to grow food. First the plant roots or crowns are grown outside for more than two years. Then at the start of their third winter they are left in the ground until it is cold enough to break the crown’s dormancy. This is one of the factors that gives British rhubarb the edge over imports from the Netherlands which arrive in the country a scene stealing couple of weeks before the Yorkshire crop. To bring them to market that early the Dutch crowns are fed with gibberellic acid to replace the hormones naturally generated by a period of cold weather. Westwood is relaxed on the subject of the imported rhubarb remarking only. “It’s good looking all right but the flavor’s nowhere near.” Back in Yorkshire sometime around the middle of November the crowns are dug up transferred to shed with earthen floors and watered in. The light is blocked out completely and the heating is turned on. In the warm and dark the shoots appear so quickly that the buds can be heard gently popping. Withing 3 weeks or so the first round of picking or pulling as it’s known can begin.
E In Westwood’s 1920s rhubarb sheds it is pitch black. I slip and slide on the narrow troughs that serve as paths between the beds of rhubarb crowns. It’s a relief when a team of pullers arrive all local men some of whom have been working for Westwood for 40 years. Each carries a sturdy candle and their pale flickering light reveals a sea of yellow leaves stretching 40 meters to the far wall. The men walk the beds plucking the satiny stems expertly choosing only the ones that have reached the length of an arm. Then cradling the fuchsia pink bundles in their arms they move on to the next patch. It’s an extraordinary sight in this age of mechanised, computerised agriculture. ‘The pulling’s done much the same way as it always has been’ Westwood says. ‘Electric light spoils the color.’ A labour intensive process it goes some way to explain the admittedly eye-watering price of the best forced rhubarb that and the heating now from oil or propane rather than coal.
F So how was this arcane cold dark heat process in use since Victorian times discovered? Westwood’s story is appealingly earthy. A gardener threw an old crown onto the horse stable muck pile the manure was hot, and plant was soon covered. The stable boy must have been puzzled by the startling pink spears that came pushing through the dirt a week or two later but happily he had the good sense to gather them. Where there’s muck there’s money – and good eating indeed.