In springtime I drive back to Kettering to pick free food from my grandmother’s garden. She’s been happy to share her autumn Conference pears and cooking apples, springtime rhubarb and summer gooseberries and strawberries with my students and it’s nice to see her. In early spring she grows pink rhubarb forced under old, rusty metal buckets, with holes punched in the top to let in light. But these tender stems are delicacies only for the family to share.
Later in spring, she’s happy to let me pick from the huge clumps of rhubarb which thrive on her compost heap, so I cut armfuls with leaves and all.
Grandma is worried.
‘You know the leaves are poisonous. You can die if you eat them.’
She tells me about someone who ate the cooked leaves as a vegetable and was so ill with stomach pains that they had to go to hospital. I’m not sure if this rhubarb poisoning story is true, but I’ve seen how she boils chopped leaves with water to clean her saucepans. If they strip the stomach in the same way that they bring a shine to her aluminium pans, then that could be painful.
‘Don’t let those children have the leaves. They could get into all sorts of trouble.’
‘Don’t worry grandma – I’ll tell them all about it. They need to know how food grows so thankyou, this will be an interesting lesson.’
Grandma knows a lot about London children. For many years during the war, evacuees from the inner city were billeted with her, and they thrived on her cooking and helped with her garden. She’s proud of her framed certificate from the Queen Elizabeth which was sent in a posh envelope with an official stamp, thanking her for this service.
It’s always a worry driving down the M1 motorway back to London in my ancient Mini traveller. The old car keeps breaking down and although I’ve learnt to check the oil with my dipstick and top up the battery water, it often shudders and grinds to a stop. I dread waiting on the hard shoulder for someone kind to help. It could be the axe murderer, but so far the AA patrol man is quick to find me and pokes about under the bonnet and gets things started. I have a yellow and silver AA badge screwed to the front bumper to show my loyalty, and I’m really grateful to be rescued on dark, rainy nights.
He waves me on my way.
‘Listen love, let me know when you are travelling down again, and I’ll follow you. Saves you flagging me down when you’re stuck.’
I know he’s teasing but it is a comforting thought.
Back at school, I plonk my huge pile of rhubarb with its massive leaves on my demonstration table.
This impressive visual aid should get their interest.
‘OK class – first to warn you – these leaves are poisonous. They can give you stomach ache, make you feel sick and some people have even died from eating them.’
This is a good start to the lesson.
I have their attention.
Now they are curious.
‘How do they poison you, miss?’ Bert isn’t usually concentrating this early in the day.
‘The leaves contain oxalic acid which is toxic. That means they are dangerous. ’
‘But miss, why is the stalk safe to eat and not the leaf – why does the poison just go into the leaf?’
There is no Google to help search for the answer, and Bert has a clever point. I’ll have to ask the biology teacher later.
Bert carries on as the others fidget, wanting to get on and cook.
‘Miss, what do you have to do to poison someone?’
Ah ha! I can see where this diversion is leading. He’s after my rhubarb leaf mountain. We’ve just had the school acid attack when someone sat a boy in concentrated sulphuric acid. It burnt the backside off his school trousers and he had to go to hospital to have his bottom checked. Now it could be the rhubarb poisoning scandal. And it’s all my fault.
‘Bert, I’m taking these leaves home – cut off the leaves and put them in this bag. ’
Why did I bother with this teaching aid? It would have been much simpler to have left them behind with my grandmother. One day my weird teaching aids might lead to trouble.
‘Get your aprons on then come round and I’ll dem. We’re going to make Rhubarb fool.’
I’ve done it again – another daft name for a recipe. Why is it called a fool? I don’t know nor care.
‘First we wash and chop the stems and cook them in a saucepan with a little water and the lid on until they are soft.’
Like the best Blue Peter presenter, I have prepared things in advance. I pass the bowl round filled with grandma’s soft, cooked rhubarb for them to see.
I give very clear cooking instructions after many disasters.
One day I told Robert to boil his potatoes and he stuffed them unpeeled in the electric kettle with some water and clicked it on. We had the devil of a job poking the mushy bits out from around the coiled element. In the same lesson I told Sam to cook his potatoes in a saucepan, so he followed my instructions exactly and put his spuds in an empty pan with no water and turned on the gas – until I spotted black smoke drifting up from under the lid.
We ready for the final touches.
Custard. My grandmother only kept Bird’s custard powder in her larder but at school we must use cheap, own label. There is a magic moment when you mix custard powder with gritty sugar and milk. Suddenly as you stir in the milk, the pale peach powder turns to a bright yellow lump – a chemical mystery which probably holds its truth in tartrazine
‘To make the custard, pour in the hot milk into this yellow mixture and stir and until it thickens.’
A delicious, golden, glossy custard magically emerges in the bowl.
‘Add your cooked rhubarb, then whisk an egg white and carefully fold it in. Then add some red colouring and spoon it into the glass dish and top with a glacé cherry. Then put it on a d’oyley.’
I haven’t told them that the cochineal red colouring is made from crushed beetles.
Imagine the screams.
‘She’s making us eat beetles! Mad teacher from the Midlands! We ain’t eating beetles!’
We use lots of food colouring in our recipes. Red for rhubarb and for glazing strawberry tarts. Green for anything made with gooseberries or cooked apples.
Tiny bottles of artificial flavouring line up on my storeroom shelves to prop up our culinary skills and lack of tasty ingredients.
Vanilla essence is added to sponge cakes, drops of almond essence mixes with the semolina that we use instead of almonds for Bakewell Tart and the ultimate sin, rum essence is dribbled onto rum babas or into chocolate truffles. How I long to taste the real thing.
They chop,cook and stir and thicken and my table soon has a display of glass dishes in various shades from pink to plum. Each on a saucer with a frilly d’oyley. Always a bloody d’oyley!
The lesson is over. And we have all made a potion of rhubarb with enhanced colours and flavours which richly deserves the name fool.
