fruit of the month.

Rhubarb’s bright red stalks bring a brilliant dash of colour into the kitchen and the sweet-sharp flavour makes it a versatile ingredient for all sorts of recipes

RECIPES AND FOOD STYLING EMILY GUSSIN AND POLLYANNA COUPLAND PHOTOGRAPHS INDIA WHILEY-MORTON

Rhubarb and oat sponge pudding

TALKING RHUBARB

• Technically rhubarb is a vegetable – you eat the plant, not something produced by the plant – but its tart, zingy flavour means it’s usually treated as a fruit in cooking.

• Rhubarb is naturally low in sugar and the stalk contains a small amount of oxalic acid, which gives it its distinctive sour taste. Just don’t eat the leaves – they contain enough oxalic acid to be bad for you.

• The crop comes into season in March and April (depending on the variety), but from December to the end of March we enjoy ‘forced’ rhubarb – the plants are kept in the dark, meaning they grow more quickly, looking for daylight, sending up slender, pinker stalks.

• Rhubarb plants love the cold and thrive in Alaska, Siberia and Yorkshire.

• Botanically, rhubarb is from the same family as buckwheat and sorrel.

FRIDAY NIGHT COCKTAIL

OUR RHUBARB NEGRONI has all the brilliant herbal, bitter flavours of a regular negroni but with the added tang of floral, fruity rhubarb. We’ve switched the classic sweet vermouth to a dry white vermouth, which allows the flavour of the fruit to shine through, with a homemade rhubarb syrup balancing any sharpness