Hi!
Like most Scandinavians (and Brits too), I am obsessed with rhubarb. For years I thought rhubarb was a northern native, something so ingrained in our food culture that it had to originate here - right? Boy was I wrong. Rhubarb can be traced back to ancient China, Mongolia and Siberia and made its way to Europe through both Russian and the Ottoman empires. In the Middle Ages rhubarb was even costlier than spices such as cinnamon and saffron. In that light it feels only fitting that we go collectively a little weak in the knees when the red stalks appear in the gardens, farmers markets and shops.
I had never experienced rhubarb as anything other than sweet until an Iranian woman my mother was teaching Danish (she was a Danish language teacher for migrants and fugitives) invited us to her home and served a rhubarb and lamb stew that blew my childish mind. So many of my core food memories are from my mothers students - Iranian, Iraqi, Afghan, Bosnian, Turkish and many more nationalities sharing their food and their cultures.
This recipe is very much a love letter to the women opening my eyes to a whole new world of flavour, cooking dolma and kofta, tagines, bureks, tahdig and pilaf rice - and pomegranate and rhubarb stews!
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