The effervescent sourness of this fruit goes well with Indian recipes, says Vikram Doctor
If you, like me, are an expert at avoiding deadlines by watching random YouTube videos, you may have seen a recently trending one about an American lady caught foraging rhubarb planted in her neighbour’s garden, but which had grown into the alley outside. The neighbour assumed the rhubarb was still hers, but when she confronted the lady she was answered with a startling outburst of threats and profanities, all while the lady defiantly kept gathering rhubarb, which she asserted was “alley property.” It was a meltdown so excessive that “crazy rhubarb lady” immediately became the social media meme for the day, and was parodied on late night TV shows.
Part of the amusement was over so much emotion being expended on an ingredient that seems slightly odd and comic. There is, to start with, ambiguity over whether rhubarb is a fruit or vegetable – the most common use of it is in sweet dishes, but it is not sweet itself, but very sour, and the thick red stalks, which is what we eat, seem like a lascivious cousin of celery, all decked out in lipstick. In 1947 the matter even went before an American judge who ruled that, despite botany and appearances, rhubarb was a fruit because it was generally treated as a fruit.
There is also the name which sounds like a burp. British film and TV actors who are appearing in thebackground are told to say “rhubarb rhubarb” to fill in general talking noise without the need to give them actual words to say. The name comes from the Greek rha barbaros, where the latter word referred to things considered foreign and uncivilized (the Greeks mocked the speech of foreigners as sounding like “bur bur”), and the former possibly gives the location of the foreigners, since rha was the Greek name for the Volga River.
Russia was, in fact, for centuries the source of rhubarb to the Western world, and its traders went to great lengths to maintain control over supply. The main source was north China or Chinese Turkestan, with the best product sometimes being said to come from Tibet. The Russians maintained a “Rhubarb Office” in the Siberian border town of Kyakhta, where all rhubarb from China was rigorously checked, and this lasted till the early 19th century when Chinese sea ports opened up the rhubarb trade.
If it seems unlikely that the sour red stalks of rhubarb would command such desire, it is because they didn’t. The rhubarb of ancient trade was not the stalks but the root which was noted for a peculiar, but medically valuable ability to be first a purgative, and then induce mild constipation. This made it ideal for patients with digestive disorders, relieving them, yet stopping it from going too far. Centuries of bad digestion kept demand for rhubarb root high, and people kept looking for new sources of supply and trying to grow different rhubarb varieties, though the Chinese kind was always considered the best.
It only seems to have been in the early 19th century that people realized that rhubarb stalks were worth eating in their own right. Perhaps this idea came from Iran and Afghanistan where the stalks are cooked as a vegetable, usually lightly fried and added to a mutton curry at the end to add a sour counterpoint. Helen Saberi gives a recipe for this Qorma-e-Rawash in her book on Afghan food and notes that rhubarb is considered a cooling food there, “good for cleansing the blood and purifying the system.”
Rhubarb became popular in Northern Europe, and later North America, for a simple reason – it is a hardy plant which becomes available for eating very early in spring, often before winter has entirely gone. It helps that since it is the stalks that are eaten there is no need to wait for fruits to form and ripen. Coming so early in the year, when few other fresh foods were available (this was before global trade in produce brought the dubious benefits of unseasonal foods), rhubarb’s sour vitality was very welcome.
Its medical reputation also helped, and it meant that rhubarb was force fed to a lot of children who grew up to hate it, another reason for its somewhat ambiguous reputation. Jane Grigson, who chronicled her enthusiasm for almost any kind of product in her wonderful Fruit Book and Vegetable Book did admit to problems with rhubarb. “Nanny food. Governess food. School-meal-food,” she growled, adding that she disliked it all the more for often being sold when it was too old and stringy. Rhubarb stalks should be young, firm and juicy, so that they need hardly any added liquid when cooked, just quickly releasing their own juices and becoming lusciously soft.
In India we suffer from no such induced prejudice, but the problem is getting rhubarb at all. It is almost unknown in our markets, though ayurveda has long valued the properties of the root. This probably came to India from China, as can be seen by its common name of rewandchini (rhawand is an Arabic name for rhubarb). The Sanskrit name is amlavetasa, but this is confusing since several plants have been identified as this, particularly a variety of Garcinia, a cousin of the kokum and mangosteen trees.
When you buy rewandchini in Ayurvedic shops it comes in amber wax like blocks, and when I broke and tasted a fragment, one reason for the confusion became apparent when I looked in the mirror. My tongue was a bright, lurid yellow, exactly the colour called gamboge, which is derived from Garcinia fruit (rotting mangosteens bleed this livid colour). Real rhubarb root is, apparently, detected by a slight crunchiness when chewed, due to the crackling of the oxalate crystals concentrated in it, and also from its two-step digestive action, but I have to admit I stopped short of trying it to that extent!
The rhubarb used for rewandchini is a slightly different variety from the one used for eating, but the British seem to have tried to grow all kinds, particularly in the Northeast. There are reports of it being cultivated and eaten in Assam, but I haven’t found any recent conformation of this (I would be grateful if any readers from Assam could let me know if they have seen and tasted rhubarb locally). Rhubarb grows easily in the hills, but has never really caught on and one unconfirmed story suggests why.
The oxalates which give rhubarb root its powers and the stalk its sourness become actually poisonous in the leaves, since these look very like edible leaves like those of beetroot there are numerous cases of poisoning linked to rhubarb leaves. The anecdote relates that rhubarb was banned in India after the leaves killed a cow and while such a formal ban probably never happened, it is quite plausible that farmers found livestock sickening after eating the leaves and decided not to take a risk with rhubarb.
This is a pity because rhubarb has much to attract Indians. We are connoisseurs of sourness, using so many kinds, like tamarind, aamchur and anardana, and rhubarb’s almost effervescent fruity sourness is a nice addition. Even Jane Grigson admitted to having good memories of raw rhubarb dipped in sugar, and in places like Turkey rhubarb stalks are dipped in salt, which sounds a lot how we like eating sour foods like green mangoes. Rhubarb is also one of the useful kinds of sourness that go well with dairy; rhubarb and custard is such a standard British dessert that the flavour is replicated in sweets. Imagine how well rhubarb would complement ultra rich Indian milk sweets like phirni and shrikhand.
Indians abroad have discovered the value of rhubarb and on the Net I found very tempting recipes for rhubarb chutney and rhubarb pachadi (raita). I haven’t tried these yet, since I only occasionally get from Trikaya which seems to be growing it on an experimental basis. The last time I had some I used it for dal. I first sautéed onions and rhubarb, then added whole masoor dal and water and cooked this till it was soft, and finished it off with a tadka of more rhubarb fried with spring onions and their greens. The first rhubarb became soft and added a creamy texture, while the second round of rhubarb and onions added a delicious sour-savoury note. It was one of the most delicious dals I have ever improvised and makes me dimly understand why that lady got so crazy over rhubarb.