Pretty In Pink - Forced Rhubarb

My garden's version of forced rhubarb.
Then again, rhubarb is not a fruit at all - it's a vegetable, the stem of a perennial plant. And the early crop has been ingeniously manipulated. Its slender girth and bright colour are the effects of "forcing". Almost 100 years ago, the received wisdom goes, rhubarb was being grown in London at the Chelsea Physic Garden when someone accidentally left an upturned bucket on top of one of the plants. The rhubarb, struggling in this light-deprived environment, produced long, thin stems and pale, etiolated leaves, and the flavour was deemed so exquisite that the accident soon became a technique.
Although it's native to Siberia, I think of rhubarb as one of ours, not least because the best January rhubarb comes, indisputably, from Yorkshire, from an area between Leeds, Wakefield and Bradford known as the "rhubarb triangle". It has found a spiritual home here, where the cold, wet weather and rich soil help the "crowns" to lay down energy before the forcing period. Indeed, a few years ago, Yorkshire rhubarb was awarded PDO (protected designation of origin) status.