If you were thinking that Ontario rhubarb was one of the first crops out of the ground every spring and it’s harvested along with strawberries so you can make delicious pies, you wouldn’t be totally wrong. But there’s something more exciting to know about it.

Did you know that in England, there’s such a thing as forced rhubarb? Yes, and it’s harvested from January to April, right before the traditional rhubarb season. As with most delicious foods, it was discovered completely by accident. The town of Wakefield in Yorkshire, England is part of the nine-square mile Rhubarb Triangle and, as the story goes, a workman digging a ditch piled some soil over a patch of rhubarb roots. Weeks later when the soil was removed they found young, tender, brightly coloured shoots that were more succulent, tender and sweet than traditional rhubarb.

Today, throughout the Rhubarb Triangle, Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb is grown in old mushroom sheds or specifically designated buildings. It’s used in much the same way as Ontario rhubarb, but because it’s harvested earlier, it’s married with apples and made into fruity crumbles, moist yogurt cakes, mouth-watering tarts and savoury chutneys that go so well with pork or duck.

Although rhubarb is technically a vegetable, we typically enjoy it more as a dessert. Soon you’ll find the tall, red stalks at your famers’ market. Look for firm, crisp, plump stalks and perky leaves with good colour. Never eat the leaves: they’re poisonous.

The traditional way to cook rhubarb is to wash the stalks and cut them into small pieces, and then stew them until tender. There is no need to add much water as rhubarb already contains a great deal of it that comes out during cooking. While still hot, sugar is added to balance out the acidity. There’s no shortage of recipes available thanks to social media and foodies – even for roasted rhubarb…. I get the concept; caramelized roasted root vegetables are delicious, but through experimentation I can tell you that it just doesn’t seem viable. You end up with a baking sheet full of water and soggy rhubarb. Like roasting strawberries, don’t be fooled.

When I was a small child, I’d steal a cup of sugar and sit in the rhubarb patch behind my grandmother’s garage eating to my heart’s content. Sitting there for hours in the quiet of the garden, I’d hear creaking and snapping noises all around me. My grandmother told me that rhubarb screams as it grows. She was referring to the rapid almost an inch per day growth of rhubarb and the noises it makes as it shoots up.

Besides adding a delightful tartness to otherwise sweeter desserts, rhubarb’s tart flavour cuts through the richness of meat, and especially cheese, very well. That’s why some courageous chefs recommend picked rhubarb on a cheese platter. Personally speaking, I think it would be lovely with rich fatty cheeses, but if you’re planning a wine and cheese event, I would not recommend pairing rhubarb with wine.

I called a few farmers and no one has any plans to grow forced rhubarb in Ontario – pity. For now, Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb will remain a delicacy as rare as white truffles. But it doesn’t have to be this way. When you’re at your farmers’ market this spring, buy a bundle of fresh rhubarb and start a conversation with the growers about how much you would like to taste and experiment with forced rhubarb. It’s worth a try, isn’t it?

by Lynn Ogryzlo

Lynn Ogryzlo is a food, wine and travel writer, international award winning author and regular contributor to Look Local Magazine. She can be reached for questions or comments at www.lynnogryzlo.ca

I picked it up very carefully with my chopsticks. If it were not for the soft tempura batter on the outside to give me some leverage, the supple slice of sweet potato would have slipped through the slick sticks. It got me thinking. Do sweet potatoes have a Japanese heritage?

This ugly, tuberous root vegetable piled high on grocers’ shelves became popular in the islands of the Pacific Ocean, spreading from Polynesia to Japan and consequently it became popular in many favourite dishes in Japan such as tempura. Who would have known?

But all sweet potatoes are not the same, explains Nick VanBerlo of Berlo’s Best Sweet Potatoes. “We grow predominantly the orange flesh varieties but we are growing more of the triple skin, white flesh varieties for the Asian community”. Nick, along with his brother Peter and father Peter Senior, own Canada’s largest sweet potato farm in Simcoe, Ontario. Berlo’s Best produces a whopping 20 million pounds of sweet potatoes annually from 1,000 acres of repurposed tobacco land.

If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering how that’s possible. How could one farm grow so much of one vegetable that is traditionally relegated to Thanksgiving and Christmas use? “Not any more”, explains Nick, “people eat it year round because of the intense Vitamin A content,” he boasts.

I checked it out and the vitamins and minerals found in a sweet potato are huge! Some resources even go so far as to call it a ‘superfood’.

Simcoe is a relatively warm area where peaches and grapes grow. It has warm days, cool nights and a longer growing season that encourages richer flavours; perfect conditions for growing sweet potatoes, which is typically a warm weather crop. It means that sweet potatoes grown here have a higher Brix level (a measurement of sweetness).

So Ontario grows a sweeter, sweet potato with richer flavours – good to know. But Nick likes to talk about eating them more than growing them. Peeled or unpeeled (for extra fibre), he always looks forward to his wife’s sweet potato chili or sweet potato hash browns. He rhymes off more ways to use sweet potatoes – from topping on Shepherd’s Pie to marrying them with curry, sweet potato soup, and as he often does, adding leftover sweet potatoes to a salad. 

At country fairs you’ll see sweet potatoes roasted whole in their jackets and drizzled with maple syrup. In restaurants, sweet potato fries outsell traditional potato fries or they are sliced, battered and deep fried into tempura – yum. You can make mashed sweet potatoes with garlic and Parmesan cheese, fry them into crispy chips, or take whole sweet potatoes and load them with anything you want for a complete meal. Even vegans prefer sweet potatoes to make dozens of dishes from sweet potato and corn cakes to sweet potato noodles and even sweet potato meatballs!

Because of their high sugar content, sweet potatoes can also be used as a dessert. They can be substituted for pumpkin in any pie recipe or use the flavour for a delicious twist on classics such as Crème Brulee or Bread Pudding. Just cut down on the sugar when substituting with sweet potato in recipes for sweet potato bread, brownies and muffins – now doesn’t that just make us all feel better?

by Lynn Ogryzlo

Lynn Ogryzlo is a food, wine and travel writer, international award winning author and regular contributor to Look Local Magazine. She can be reached for questions or comments at www.lynnogryzlo.ca