Pete Moody grew up in Delph and also lived in Diggle and Uppermill before going up to Lancaster to study English in 1996.
He taught himself to cook from the backs of cereal boxes, Chinese whispers and Youtube, deciding the long hours, crippling financial difficulty and a snooker-player complexion were preferable to a teaching career. He is currently starting up a business in Shrewsbury.
WHAT’S PINK, creaky and happens in the dark in Yorkshire?
Not a man going downhill at night in a bathtub. Rhubarb? Correct.
When February 14 looms and you’re mentally juggling a meal in a half-decent restaurant or a bunch of dog-eared roses from a distant petrol station, take a moment and consider what your dearly beloved really means to you.
If it’s a trip to the greengrocer for a few sticks of this cartoonish plant and a bag of sugar then we’re getting somewhere.
Rhubarb is one of those strange creatures, like tomatoes and zebras, that seemingly occupies two camps. It looks like celery but it’s not related. It’s not sweet but we treat it like a fruit.
I have memories of my granddad in the far corner of a Delph garden sawing away at thick stems of rhubarb with a penknife, one old elbow patch shining in the wan sun. He would leave it in the sink for his wife to wash and poach while he cleaned soil from his fingernails with the same knife. Don’t try this at home, it’s foolish. Do try this, it’s a fool:
This Valentine’s day acquire a pound of rhubarb. Forced is the most tender, grown in the pitch black in Yorkshire sheds between January and March, and the brightest in colour.
Your garden will yield stalks later in spring that are much tougher and require a bit more cooking, sugar and sympathy (and an owd fella wi a knife).
Wash the stalks and nip off the leaf and tails and cut into two inch batons, then arrange on greaseproof paper on a baking tray.
Then you can do this in one of two ways. Either cover evenly and entirely in icing sugar and bake at 180C for around twelve to fifteen minutes, or until just giving to a push.
Or make a syrup with equal parts white wine and sugar, bring half a pint in volume of white sugar and half a pint of wine to the boil and then carefully pour over the rhubarb before baking for ten minutes maximum (this syrup can be infused with vanilla, cinnamon or star anise for more interesting flavours).
Cool the fruit and mix with equal parts sweetened whipped cream and thick custard and set in clean jam jars for a little surprise. Pour a little of the tray juices over when serving.
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