It’s sour, it’s tangy, it’s sweet, it’s baked. It’s in lemonade, or pickled, or flecked through flat bread. Surprise! It’s in chili. Here it’s in coffee cake, there it’s in kombucha. Now it’s an ice cream, now it’s a salsa.
It is rhubarb, and it is to Alaska what zucchini is to the Midwest: ubiquitous, delicious, and creatively hidden in foods or dumped under cover of night on your neighbor’s porch.
At the Palmer, Alaska Midsummer Garden and Art Faire it is featured in the annual Rhubarb Rumble, where locals like myself and my family traipse to the booths and storefronts of various eateries to sample their entries and vote for our favorites.
First, a rhubarb and beet puree, which “can be used as a dipping sauce or put on ice cream,” I’m told. We drink it with a straw, and it is earthy and smooth. Then, a rhubarb-strawberry salsa offered from the stand of the local farm that grows the most rhubarb in the state. Paired with cinnamon pita chips, it is delightful — light and fruity, with a bite of cumin and jalapeño. We lap it up and wish for more.
Down the road we find a rosemary rhubarb flatbread — too dry for our liking — and a subtle Korean chili shrimp, where the rhubarb hides behind red pepper flecks. That we rule too sneaky. We want our rhubarb to be loud and proud, out in the open where we can embrace and celebrate it.
Next, rhubarb pickled in ginger and turmeric, then a delectable rhubarb scone with lemon glaze. Finally, we are wowed by a ground beef chili, where rhubarb chunks replace the traditional tomatoes, and the whole dish is a pleasant surprise. Rhubarb in chili? Who would’ve thought?
We return to the festival tents and submit our rhubarb ballots, ruling the salsa our favorite with the chili a close second.
And though we are full of tastes of rhubarb, we buy two kinds of rhubarb lemonade from festival vendors and sit in the grass in the warm Alaska summer sun.
