The Case of the Red Rhubarb

Good morning! Pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit down for a second, and take a breather.

I cannot remember the last time that a police officer was in my kitchen, but if one were to wander in now, I would probably be in trouble.

While cleaning has removed most of it, it is still easy to find red splatters on salt shakers, the sides of my toaster, and in the far regions of my stand mixer.

It looks a little creepy, and a lot suspicious. Fortunately, however, it was the result of nothing illegal, just preparing a little of one of my favorite springtime vegetables, rhubarb. A little midnight rhubarb-peeling (actually, that does sound vaguely illegal).

You don't have to peel the stalks of this long, red vegetable, but as a member of the celery family, older stalks benefit from having their tougher outer strings pulled off. An easy way to do this is by running a sharp vegetable peeler over them.

The downside is that if your peeler isn't sharp enough, red rhubarb juice sprays on everything, including your shirt, the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the cat...everything.

So if you don't want to peel rhubarb, you don't have to, as long as it gets cut into small pieces and cooked long enough to be tender.

My favorite rhubarb cookery methods? There's the usual jams and jellies, of course, but I'm still practicing my canning skills, and I can't expect most of you out there to want to spend the better part of a weekend "putting up" rhubarb, can I?

You can stew rhubarb with sugar and serve it on its own, as a side dish, kind of like fried apples. Still, that's kind of plain, and you can find that recipe in any "general use" cookbook.

So instead, I present a simple cake, courtesy of my friend Kari Ackerman in Auburn, Ind. In addition to being delicious on its own and easy to make, it is a good way to introduce rhubarb newbies to the vegetable's spicy-sweet-tart flavor.

This cake absolutely fills a 9x13-inch pan to the brim before baking. You will say to yourself, "This cannot work. It's going to overflow. It's going to explode. And what are all those marshmallows going to do?"

Don't worry. It works.

The cake is best served the day it is made.

KARI'S RHUBARB CAKE (serves 12)

5 to 6 cups chopped rhubarb (cut into about 1/2-inch-square pieces)

1 (3-ounce) box strawberry gelatin mix, dry

1 (16-ounce) bag mini marshmallows

1 (18.25-ounce) box white cake mix, plus ingredients to prepare it (use one without pudding)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Grease and flour a 9x13-inch baking dish and spread the rhubarb out in the bottom. Sprinkle the dry gelatin mix evenly over the top, then spread the marshmallows over that. The pan will be almost full.

Prepare the cake mix according to the directions on the box, then pour the batter slowly and evenly over the marshmallows. The pan will be very full.

Bake for 1 hour. Cool completely in the pan before cutting and serving, turning each slice over as you serve it so that the rhubarb layer faces up.

Chris Summers lives and cooks in Barboursville. You can contact him at cordhaven@hotmail.com.

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