Recipe Reduction 126

Rhubarb Crumble
by Smitten Kitchen

I am not known as one who thinks well on their feet. I'm always a little flustered--and confused--at the farmer's market, with all those eyes looking at me, all that glorious vegetableation spread out....  I usually babble inanely or talk not at all; buy things I don't need, and if I go prepared with a list, never fill it.

But I was there in search of rhubarb and the facebook post for [name withheld] Farms said they had it. I've been sitting on two recipes for rhubarb crumble for years and finally had a chance of doing them!

Barely glancing left or right, I tracked down the farm stand and saw--no rhubarb. So I had to ask for it. The vendor remembered my face so I asked how she was doing and we had a short talk about her knee problems, then I screwed up my courage and asked about the rhubarb. "Yes," she said. "I didn't even know I had it, until they told me." She went to the cooler in the back and pulled out a big bunch of bright red stems with gorgeous puffy leaves. I asked for two of them; she produced another and I paid.

I made a vague remark about how it was funny they left the leaves on, since the leaves are poisonous, and she said, "Is that so?"  I said I thought so and luckily, another customer came up.

When I got home and started to prepare it, I looked closely and wondered why it so very closely resembled Swiss Chard. Did the two really look so much alike? I'd never seen the leaves of rhubarb before.  I tasted a bit of the stem--not sour at all. It tasted exactly like Swiss Chard. It was Swiss Chard.

To wrap this story up, no Rhubarb Crumble was made that weekend.  And I was too big a coward to eat the leaves. I composted them and cooked the stems for a side dish.  A few days later I went to Central Market and paid $7 a pound for three stems of bonafide, sour as lemons, rhubarb. And this was the result:

It was good. All of her recipes are. If I do it again I'll use more butter in the topping. And take my advice on this: if you get tired of waiting for a crumble to brown on top and you put it under the broiler, WATCH IT.  Blackened crumble is not a dessert you want to serve.