Shetland Rhubarb

For more than two centuries households throughout Shetland have been picking the abundant stalks at their freshest, preserving them by making jams and chutneys for consuming throughout the year. You will often find them among the prizewinning produce at summer agricultural shows.

As a recipe component rhubarb is perhaps most commonly found serving as the base for desserts such as crumbles or fools.

But, as Jenny points out, it is a “wonderfully versatile” ingredient whose sharpness lends itself to anything from pickles accompanying meat and fish to infusions adding flavour to multiple varieties of alcohol.

Jenny, who enjoys a burgeoning reputation as a lively authority on Shetland food and drink having moved home three years ago, is forever busy experimenting in her kitchen.

By happy coincidence, when Taste of Shetland gets in touch she is “having a bit of a rhubarb day” making honey-fermented rhubarb, pickled rhubarb, crumbles, a “rhubarbecue” sauce and the beginnings of a rhubarb cheong (fruit syrup).

She offers a potted version of the ingredient’s fascinating history. It originated in Russia, which had a monopoly over the “very lucrative” trade until it was brought to this country by a Scottish physician with ties to the Russian court.

He smuggled the seeds over the border – the penalty if caught would have been death – and got them to Edinburgh, planted them in his garden and soon started selling rhubarb pastilles.

It then spread across the country and moved beyond its initial medicinal uses to become a foodstuff.

As Hayley Anderton wrote in the first volume of Shetland Wool Adventures in 2020, when Hannah Glasse gave a recipe for rhubarb tarts in The Complete Confectioner in the late 18th century “eating rhubarb, rather than taking it as a medicine, still sounds like something of a novelty”.

Long before the advent of modern grocery shopping, islanders such as Mary Andreas’ mother Kathleen Leask in Bigton would harvest the plant when it was in season and make jam in “these muckle Nescafe coffee cars – the kind of thing we saved and kept them to put your rhubarb jam in for the winter time”.

“Rhubarb jam was probably the only thing we ever got, jam-wise, because there wasn’t availability of anything else,” she says of her 1960s upbringing.

By the time the late Prior, whose authoritative volume on the subject was published in 2009, began holidaying in Shetland she encountered rhubarb “growing in every garden, and around old abandoned crofts”.

“It grew with an uninhibited luxuriance, indeed, far better than anything else in those windswept islands, and it formed an important item in the Shetland diet,” Prior wrote.

Five isles residents are credited for contributing recipes to the book, including Shetland lamb khoresh by Ingirid Eunson – the Persian concoction enriched by the “tiny and hardy” sheep that “graze on hillsides rich with heather and thyme”.

Perhaps less likely to whet your average Shetlander’s appetite is a recipe for puffin with rhubarb jam, included as a curiosity because it is still eaten in Faroe and Iceland.

In addition to numerous jams, chutneys, marmalades, cakes, fools and tarts, Rhubarbaria contains chapters with methods for cooking rhubarb with various types of meat and seafood.

“Rhubarb is a wonderfully versatile ingredient and between May and July in Shetland there is tonnes of it to play with,” Jenny tells us. “That sharp, sour flavour lends itself well to both sweet and savoury, and there are plenty of things it can be made into other than jam.”

She enjoys pairing it with fish, devising yummy recipes ranging from pickled rhubarb and mackerel to rhubarb salsa with whitefish tacos.

Followers of her spectacular Food with Filska Instagram account will know Jenny has a questing passion for fashioning exciting new creations with highly imaginative use of ingredients.

Rhubarb is no exception, and the following are just a selection of her boundless ideas: “Infuse it with gin or vodka. Saturate it with honey and leave it to ferment – soon you will have sweet tender honeyed rhubarb to top porridge and a perfumed honey for salad dressing.

“Make it into a sweet and smoky BBQ sauce. Slice it up thin with peppers, onions, tomatoes, a squeeze of lime and seasoning for a tart and savoury salsa.

“Blitz it up with chillies, ginger and garlic and let it ferment for a wild rhubarb sriracha. You can shove the stalks that are a little old and fibrous through the juicer, and use the juice to make cordial, wine, syrup, kombucha etc.”

Chef Helen Fullerton, who runs Hel’s Kitchen and develops menus for The Dowry, agrees that rhubarb can be utilised equally well in simple, traditional ways and as the base for more ornate offerings.

“I love summer when rhubarb is readily available all over Shetland,” she says. “Nothing beats a simple rhubarb crumble with vanilla ice cream.

“However, I also love making rhubarb lightly poached in hibiscus flowers with a set vanilla custard, ginger crumb, fresh tarragon and brandy snap biscuit.”

There are also several appetising rhubarb recipes in Marian Armitage’s first book, Shetland Food and Cooking, which lists methods for rhubarb and ginger jam, mackerel with rhubarb, chutney and hooch.

Perhaps most mouth-watering of all is her recipe for a rhubarb Arctic roll made with vanilla ice cream.

As Marian writes in her book, all over the islands jam makers are “oxter deep in rhubarb” in the early summer: “I make a lot of this jam, some with and some without ginger, and give it as presents or use it as barter.”

Her rhubarb hooch recipe – using vodka or white rum – comes courtesy of Neil and Pat Thomson in Fair Isle: “The colour is such a lovely pink, the flavour is fruity and sharp – just the thing for rounding off a leisurely dinner in the ‘simmer dim’ when no one has to drive home.”

The stalk is frequently used in booze. As well as Rhubarb Old Tom gin and rhubarb vodka, it is also used to make wine and to flavour fruity ales. A special shoutout to craft beer producer Brew York for its marvellously named and delicious tasting “Rhubarbra Streisand” milkshake pale ale!

If it’s a more sober tipple you’re after, Mary Andreas has just the thing: her refreshing rhubarb fizz, an alcohol-free champagne, stole the show during an educational visit to Cunningsburgh Primary School the other week.

“We went in to speak about nutrition, and took a whole lot of ingredients,” she says. “The bairns all got the rhubarb fizz recipe and went home with it – that was a real hit!”

Mary finds the science behind growing rhubarb intriguing. Depending on who you ask, the optimal PH of the soil is somewhere between 5.0 and 7.5.

“The difference in varieties is quite astounding,” she says, “because I have rhubarb growing here in the yard, definitely a red-y tinge to it, but we also get stalks that are pretty green and the flavour is very similar; it’s just that it doesn’t look as boannie.

“My sister Winnie down in the Ness has red rhubarb and it’s never ever changed, but I get the impression it is something to do with the soil. Some folk would maintain that you could take red rhubarb, stick it in different soil and it will eventually go green…”

There is lots of advice online, she notes, about the importance of clearing dead leaves away (they are poisonous to eat but make good fertiliser) and treating the soil before planting rhubarb. But irrespective of how much folk tend to the stalks, it continues to flourish.

Indeed, one of precious few horticultural certainties Shetlanders enjoy is the knowledge there will be an abundant supply of the stuff come next spring. Another sure thing is that the endlessly creative women quoted in this article will continue finding innovative uses for this curious and adaptable pink vegetable.