I was so pleased with myself yesterday. I had blanched a bit of my rhubarb by putting an old dustbin over it, and finally got round to harvesting it. The stems were really long, pale, thin and tender. I cut a portion up into lengths to
sell in the shop today, and made the rest into a big crumble. This year I have a few Angelica plants doing well, but had yet to try them. Since I have read that these mix well with rhubarb I cut up a little of one the largest leaf stems and mixed it in. Because the stem seemed a bit woody, I put only a little of the biggest stem, with some of the smaller leaf stems too.
The crumble looked great, it smelt a bit aromatic, but I thought it was fine, the stems had cooked down and I couldn't detect any fibrousness at all. My husband however (who likes his puddings) wasn't sure about it from the time it came out of the
oven. He said it smelt overpowering and really didn't like it. He did finish his bowl but said it tasted strange. I was thinking about it this morning, and I may have worked out the reason why he doesn't like it. My husband is one of those people who taste something really unpleasant in celery. I gather it is a genetic thing, and so I don't grow or cook with celery as a rule. I'm thinking now that angelica is in the celery family and therefore whatever it is that he can taste in celery is also coming through in the angelica.
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I'm a bit sad about this. Angelica seems to grow really well for me, and even has seeded itself in from one of the plants that grew last year. I was looking forwards to trying it in different ways. It's only a biannual, but I
Alan Carter says it can last a few years if the flowers are not allowed to develop a bit like some kales....
I was going to transplant some of the seedlings down into my new growing area in the hope that their bulk would add organic matter and the taproots would help break up the compaction, but they're going to be a lot less useful if we can't eat them too!
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