Finally making rhubarb tasty to myself: flour-less rhubarb crisp

Jun 9, 2014 · 3 minute read · Comments
cookingfoodrhubarbKretschmann Farm

For the first forty years of my life, I believe I never ate any rhubarb. At least, I don’t ever recall anything identified as rhubarb that I ate. It was just something I heard about, in the context of pie, and I rarely eat pies, and am rather particular about pie when I do eat it (for example, I have sometimes eaten pumpkin pie, because my father likes it, but I never once really enjoyed it).

My Krestschmann Farm box subscription has always recognized that some people don’t like rhubarb, and allows opting out of receiving it. Since I never ate it, I didn’t know whether I liked it, but looking up its description online, I felt no need to try it, so I always indicated that I did not want it.

Today was the first time I cooked rhubarb and made something that I actually enjoyed eating. Here’s the story.

My first time cooking rhubarb was a disaster

Almost exactly a year ago, Abby and I accidentally did not specify rhubarb exclusion from our farm box (upon renewing our subscription). So we received rhubarb.

I didn’t know what the heck to do with it. I decided to make an Indian-style lentil dish and “hide” rhubarb in it. At first I thought it was OK, but then I decided it was weird. Unfortunately, I had to finish the whole batch. Abby didn’t help me finish it.

Abby’s experiment didn’t work for me

Abby also tried an experiment, cooking rhubarb with banana on the stove. The resulting concoction caused an argument, because after trying it, I refused to eat any more of it, but she had made a huge batch and so she was stuck with it.

My experiment today

Today I decided that instead of randomly making crap up, I would look for some kind of “recipe”, and also incorporate the advice of friends from last year. The following is what I made. I found it surprisingly edible, and even had to stop myself from eating too much after dinner:

My ingredients:

• Coconut oil
• Rhubarb, chopped up
• Honey (I tried to go easy with this!)
• Cinnamon
• Cloves
• Orange zest
• Lemon juice
• Salt
• Cocoa powder (a tiny sprinkle, just an improvisation)
• Raw walnuts and pecans, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F, layer the nuts on top of the remainder of the mixture, and bake for 40 minutes.

Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions to me last year!

The result was fairly tart, which is fine, but I didn’t want to put too much sugar into this.

What next?

I was planning to notify Kretschmann Farm that we don’t want to receive rhubarb, but I have second thoughts now.

Nevertheless, we will probably go ahead as planned and put rhubarb on our “do not want” list, simply because we’d rather get other stuff instead.

Lessons learned

I learned some lessons from this whole rhubarb incident:

• I can learn to like stuff I never ate for decades, if I prepare it just so. (More generally, I try to continuously find opportunities to love what I used to hate.)
• It is wise to listen to accumulated wisdom, especially from my friends (whose taste might be correlated a bit with mine).
• Accidentally not choosing to opt out of my “default” preference led to some interesting experiences.

What’s the latest food you feared or hated or didn’t know about that you recently tried? How did it go? If it went poorly, will you try again, or just write it off?