Another Spring Lunch for 6–8

I love rhubarb: a quick glance at the entry for it in the Index will suggest how much. But my real passion goes deeper; at home I use it whenever I can get away with it. Maybe it’s the relatively short season (although I find I can go from the early forced stuff to the hardy outdoors-reared stalks with hardly a hiccup) that makes it so attractive, but if it’s in the shops, I want to cook with it. I make rhubarb fool (divine used to wedge together the two vanilla-scented halves of a Victoria sponge); rhubarb and raspberry crumble (the rhubarb February-fresh, the raspberries always used to be from the freezer cabinet, but more recently they’re fresh too, flown in at great expense from Chile); plain stewed rhubarb; rhubarb custard pie; the pie, indeed, above; all the other rhubarb-rich recipes in this book; and my absolute tear-inducingly comforting favourite, rhubarb meringue pie.