Rhubarb-Prune Tsimmes: A Spring-Inspired Take on an Ashkenazi Classic for Passover

At Passover, I’m all about celebrating the bounty of spring produce. There’s artichokes, asparagus, and above all rhubarb, that sour celery-looking vegetable masquerading as a fruit that’s, alas, rarely found outside pie in this country. But it doesn’t have to be that way. For example, you can put it in this rhubarb-prune tsimmes.

Originating around Western China, this cold-weather crop eventually migrated through Persia and west to Europe. According to Joan Nathan, the word “rhubarb” derives from the ancient Greek Rha (their name for what we know today as the Volga River) and barbaron (foreign).

While rhubarb may not be commonly associated with Jewish cooking, it can be found in numerous Persian and Greek Jewish recipes, where it is treated as a vegetable and used in savory preparations.

It also makes some appearances in the Ashkenazi repertoire. Joan Nathan says that it was a Ukrainian custom to add rhubarb to schav (sorrel soup), and Fania Lewando’s Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook, originally published in Yiddish in 1938, features a number of rhubarb recipes, from blintzes to sorbet.

If anyone knows anything more about the role of rhubarb in Ashkenazi cuisine, please get in touch with me; I’m very interested in this topic but haven’t been able to find much.

Anyway, onto today’s recipe—this is a tart, spring-y take on tsimmes, the sweetened Ashkenazi fruit and vegetable stew often featuring carrots and prunes. Rhubarb is emphatically not a traditional ingredient in this dish, but the tartness of the rhubarb adds a delightful brightness to a dish that can easily cross into stodgy territory. This rhubarb-prune tsimmes not pretty to look at, but it is delicious.

The recipe below is slightly adapted from Jayne Cohen’s beautiful cookbook The Gefilte Variations, which is full of unique contemporary twists on classic dishes.

Rhubarb-Prune Tsimmes

1 large onion, chopped

1 tablespoon olive or canola oil

2 garlic cloves, minced

Salt and black pepper, to taste

¼ cup honey

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 1-inch chunks

1 cup vegetable broth

1 pound rhubarb, fresh or frozen, ends trimmed and stalks cut into 1-inch pieces

1 cup pitted prunes, halved

In a large skillet, sauté the onion in the oil over medium heat for 5 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook for a minute or two. Season generously with salt and pepper to taste. Turn the heat to medium-low, cover, and sweat the mixture 10–15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the honey, cinnamon, and carrots, and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes.

Pour in the broth and bring the mixture to a boil. Add the rhubarb and prunes and simmer over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until the rhubarb is soft and the carrots are tender, about 25–30 minutes.

Turn the heat to high and boil the mixture, uncovered, until the liquid in the pan is thick and syrupy.

Sources: The Gefilte Variations: 200 Inspired Re-creations of Classics from the Jewish Kitchen, with Menus, Stories, and Traditions for the Holidays and Year-Round (Jayne Cohen, 2000); King Solomon’s Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World (Joan Nathan, 2017); “Rhubarb for Pesach,” Flavors of Diaspora (Jonathan Katz, April 3, 2017); The Vilna Vegetarian Cookbook: Garden-Fresh Recipes Rediscovered and Adapted for Today’s Kitchen (Fania Lewando, trans. Eve Jochnowitz, 2015)