So it was high rhubarb season here in Edinburgh and the shops were just busting with rhubarb. It looked so good sitting out in the sunshine at the corner shop that I just had to take some home with me, although admittedly I thought it was something else, something less bitter.
My flatmate said it could be fried in butter and would achieve the texture of melting. I wanted the texture of melting. I fried the rhubard in butter and threw spoonfuls of sugar on top, and it came out a bitter, bitter paste. I put it on rice with some tomatos and it was just about tolerable. I don't recommend this particular recipe.
Ezra, these are the weirdest ways of eating rhubarb known to humankind. It can be really nice.
Rhubarb is lovely, but it needs sugar worse than just about anything, even maybe chocolate. If I remember your austere ways correctly, it may be physically impossible for you to pour in enough sugar to make rhubarb taste good.
But it's never too late to change your ways, eh? Try cooking it with something else: strawberries? apricots? apples? Use a proper recipe. Close your eyes and let the white grains drizzle down in a thick stream! Be lavish: half a cup! A full cup! To be human is to have a thirst for sweetness!
Hey, I know it's weird! I was experimenting, hey? Thomas Edison knew 1038 ways not to make a lightblub and stuff, right?? Now you know at least one way not to make rhubarb!
As for the drizzling of thick streams of sugar, I don't know... I'm leery of the lots of sugar. I came here not to embrace sweetness, but to bury it...
You may have gone to the wrong place, then. The Scots are notorious for their obsession with sweeties. Makes up for the weather. Look at Irn-Bru. Look at their teeth.
Ez, don't cook it at all. Miranda's got the right idea! Herschel's mom used serve us rhubarb when we were playing in his backyard. She'd pick it, take off the poisonous leaves, wash it and drizzle plenty of honey along the stems. It's delicious, natural and summery that way.
I've been agonizing about this ever since I wrote my first comment. My memory is inaccurate. Herschel's mom never drizzled honey on the rhubarb stalks - she put out a bowl of it for us to dip in as we munched.
Someone here tells me raw rhubarb is poisonous. Do I believe them?