Tarte A La Rhubarbe

We're lucky to have a small rhubarb patch in the garden and that it produces a couple good crops each year. When we moved into the house, the rhubarb was not doing so well. I read that every five years, or when the stems are staying spindly, that it's time to divide the plants.

Trimmed and washed in the kitchen sink.

Well, our rhubarb certainly had spindly stems. So I dug them up, divided the rhizomes, and relocated them into what was supposed to become our perennial herb garden (that's another story). The first year, they didn't do very well at all, which I understand to be normal.

Peeled a bit, cut into sections, macerating in sugar.

But the second year they put up some very respectable stalks, and have done very nicely since. We'll be coming up on the five year mark in another year or two, so I'll have to keep an eye on them and decide when to divide again.

The finished pie. Not a thing of beauty, but tasty, nonetheless.

Springtime is rhubarb time and I've made one pie already. It's not the American two-crust version; it's a French recipe that uses a sweetened egg custard to hold the fruit together. The rhubarb is trimmed and macerated in sugar before it goes into the pie.