|
|
|
| Current Issue |
|
|
| Resources |
|
|
|
Spring in a Pie
| Article
# : |
10938 |
|
|
Section : |
LIFE
|
| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1993 |
973 Words |
| Author
: |
Linda Joyce Forristal
Linda Joyce Forristal, Life editor for The World & I, is a
member of Les Dames d'Escoffier and is on the board of the
Weston A. Price Foundation. |
Certain things take me home to my childhood on an Iowa farm. One is strawberry patches. We had one behind the machine shed where my mother would pick strawberries until her arms were tanned. (She was the only one in the family who could without acquiring a sunburn.) Another is fireflies. But more than anything else, rhubarb pies evoke strong memories.
Each spring we waited for the rhubarb to magically appear from what had been frozen ground only a few short weeks before. The large, fan-shaped leaves at the end of each stalk gathered so much sunlight that the plants quickly grew to harvest size.
The first rhubarb was somehow always the best. Not because it was better quality than the rhubarb gathered later in the season, but because it yielded the first spring pie. That first rhubarb pie was not so much a harbinger of spring as a clear sign that spring was half gone. Spring in a pie, if you will.
MANY RHUBARBS
Exactly what rhubarb we pay homage to in the spring has been a matter of contention, for there are many rhubarbs. But of all the rhubarbs there are two significant kinds, one valued for its medicinal qualities and the other it's culinary.
Medicinal rhubarb, sometimes called giant rhubarb, is native to Tibet, western China, and the Mongolian plateau. Its seed stalk grows five to eight feet tall and its leaves stretch two to three feet wide. Culinary rhubarb is much smaller and while it has certain laxative qualities it is not considered a dependable medicine. Its native range is from Siberia into eastern Europe. Early in the seventeenth century this original culinary rhubarb, later called rhapontic, was discovered by a trade merchant in Bulgaria near the famed Rila Monastery. From there it was take to Italy, and eventually it made its way into the herbal gardens of England.
Clifford Foust, the author of a new scholarly book entitled Rhubarb: The Wondrous Drug, goes into great detail as to why culinary rhubarb was to initially the rage it grew to be. One reason was that rhapontic, sometimes called English rhubarb, was not really that tasty. It took fifty to one hundred years of fiddling with it and other parents species--what scientists call hybridizing--before versions of edible rhubarb were truly appealing to the taste buds.
Credit for
...
Read Full Article
Look for this article in Ask.com
|
|
