Rhubarb Crisp with Vanilla Ice Cream

My garden had to be put to sleep this week. The zucchini, peppers and tomatoes finished their yield and they needed to be mulched for next years potting soil. In the process of doing this, the rhubarb seemed to be calling my name. I asked my eldest daughter to pick all the stalks that were big and thick and I’d bake something with them. 

My first thought was to make a pie with some frozen strawberries I had. The classic strawberry rhubarb combination is one of my favorites; the sweetness of the berry balances the tartness of the rhubarb nicely. But, after more thought, I decided to keep my focus on the rhubarb itself.

In my family, rhubarb reigns supreme. When I was young, my grandmother used to encourage us kids to run through the garden and eat the stalks raw and freshly pulled. I’ll never forget my first taste. . .Yuck!!! Gross!!! Bitter, sour, tart, hardly digestible. It was then that she offered a wee Tupperware bowl of white sugar for dipping and that was it for me. Rhubarb became my favourite daytime, playtime, anytime snack. Of course, it could be said that it was really just a means to eat raw sugar but my love for rhubarb remains and I no longer eat it that way.

It is a very tart fruit and needs sugar to make it palatable. It resembles celery stalks with it’s stringing consistency. The leaves are toxic; only the stalks can be eaten. A super trick to harvesting is to never cut the stalks but to pull them from the plant. This encourages the plant to grow more stalks to replace the ones that have been pulled. If you cut them, the remaining stalk prevents the plant from growing another one in it’s place.

There are lots of different types of rhubarb. The type I am growing is not a red one. It’s flesh remains almost all green and so doesn’t cook up to be reddish pink. Some would say that’s a call for food colouring but I like it green. The taste is still there and it actually makes for a tarter finish when you use a green variety. No matter what kind you use, the cooking is the same.

Here’s my recipe for the crisp I made. It even impressed a friend of mine who doesn’t like rhubarb!!! (You know who you are!) I think I should also mention that this recipe is my standard recipe for any crisp. I simply change up the fruit I use and everything else stays the same. So, this can become a peach crisp with peaches, blackberry crisp with blackberries, apple crisp with apples, etc.

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