The sun may be trying it’s best but there’s not a lot poking its head out of the ground yet. This month, it was a toss-up between wild garlic, nettles and rhubarb, and I decided to go with the weird fruit-vegetable. Mostly because a few bunches arrived while I was mulling it over. Yes, I’m that fickle. I thought about putting wild garlic and rhubarb together, but came to my senses just in time.
You’ll all be making crumbles and fools, tarts and and trifles from rhubarb over the next couple of months. Because of it’s acidity, rhubarb works in savoury cooking too. We’ve used it in soups, especially with carrot and squash, and it works really well with the tang of fresh goat’s cheese and the punch of watercress in this salad.
Bluebell Falls is one those enigmatic fresh cheeses. It seems simple, yet, like it’s sheep’s milk counterpart, Knockalara, when you try to find something similar to recommend to unfortunate people who can’t access either, nothing quite matches up.
200g caster sugar
1 lemon
1 orange
50g hazelnuts
3 sticks rhubarb, in 2cm slices
1 4cm piece of fresh ginger, thinly sliced
100mls rose wine
100mls olive oil
1 small fennel bulb
200g watercress
150g fresh goat’s cheese, crumbled


