Rhubarb meringue tart

Rhubarb is at its best well before any of the earliest varieties of soft fruit and represents one of the few genuine winter treats at the pudding stage. And it’s winter we are talking about: forced rhubarb, not the outdoor variety that reaches the shelves in spring and summer, which is coarse and bitter. Forced rhubarb is toothpaste-pink and comparatively fragile in flavour. Traditionally it is grown in Yorkshire but the enterprising Dutch now offer thicker, though not superior, rhubarb at