As spring melts into the onset of summer, the vivid and colorful landscape around us deepens. Pinks, greens, blues, golds. The colors of flowers and fruits — blushing peaches, apricots and plums. Flowering peonies, dahlias and poppies. Amidst these, there’s the fleeting season of pink rhubarb stalks.
It wasn’t until age 11 when I moved to Denver from Jerusalem that I’d even heard of rhubarb. One evening my Aunt Honey introduced me to it by way of her delicious strawberry-rhubarb compote. What a revelation it was! I fell in love.
To me, even juicy red strawberries were a rare specialty back then. But rhubarb? It was unknown to me.
Whatever that pink “applesauce” type thing was, I was hooked.
A little while later I encountered rhubarb in its raw form. Not only was it delicious, but gorgeous too! It looked like glowy irridescent pink colored celery.
Unlike celery, which holds its shape in cooking, rhubarb does not. In the cooking process, rhubarb transforms into more of a soft saucy texture, similar to applesauce.
I learned that the pairing of strawberries and sweetened rhubarb make for a classic sweet-tart combination, popularly simmered into pale pink spring fruit compote, or also — famously — pie.
In fact, an Alsatian rhubarb custom or tradition is that the first bloom of the season’s rhubarb plant must be baked into none other than a delicious pie. After that initial maiden confection of the season, rhubarb can be put to different uses. But first: pie.
Raw rhubarb is truly a visual treat. With its crimson intensity, it almost shimmers with a jewel-esque kind of patina. While the pink becomes more muted by the cooking process, the color is still very much present.
It’s one of those signature “Sign of Spring” and early summer, almost ornamental looking pieces of produce.
I wait for it each year, searching it out at Farmers Markets. I am grateful when I spy a bundle languishing on a supermarket shelf that I can easily pick up on a routine grocery run.
Technically, rhubarb is a plant, and even a vegetable, but classically it’s most often simmered into desserts.
While I have never cooked with it in savory dishes, apparently rhubarb can also be tucked into an array of savory foods, as well as cocktails. Nevermind its supposed medicinal properties.
Somehow, though, this pretty pink-ridged stalk is most used in the kitchen to prepare sweet-tart treats.
One day, I hope to grow rhubarb in my own yard — or potted, on my balcony. Its oversized leaves and plumes of cloud-like flowers would add beauty to any horticultural scape, even if its value were aesthetic alone.
But to think this pink plant can also enrich and contribute to my churning out of treats elevates it even more.
Until this year, my rhubarb recipe repertoire was more limited, consisting of the typical fruit-filled American style strawberry-rhubarb compote (at times with some added apples) or pie. Years ago, I used to prepare a rhubarb cranberry soup on Passover. And now and then I baked some rhubarb into coffee cake or citrus olive oil cake. That was pretty much it.
Then, recently, I raised my rhubarb game.
I discovered Tarte a la Rhubarb, and instead of the more delicious yet common pairing of strawberry rhubarb pie, it’s a European version of pastry crust filled with the palest yellow vanilla custard or a delicate frangipane, crowned with a lovely pink rhubarb herringbone pattern, or a basket-weave pattern.
It is divine!
You might be shrugging right now, thinking, “who hasn’t heard of that?”
Well, I hadn’t.
Like in 6th grade, when I was first introduced to rhubarb, I was only recently introduced to this special spring-early summer pastry.
Now that I have, on the chance you haven’t know about it either, I didn’t want you to miss out on the opportunity to bake this open face pie during this slim, fresh rhubarb season.
Denver is not Alsace, plus this year it’s anyway too late for the tradition of baking the season’s first rhubarb into a pie.
Perhaps it’s time to launch a new Denver (and Jerusalem) rhubarb season tradition: Spring-Summer rhubarb season must be closed out with the baking of a custard-based Tarte a la Rhubarb.
© IJN 2026