Rhubarb Is the Best Spring Vegetable That You Probably Think Is Fruit

Welcome to Health Goth, our column dedicated to cooking vegetables in ways that even our most cheeseburger-loving, juice-bar-loathing readers would approve of. Not everyone realizes this, but vegetables actually do taste good. We invite chefs to prove this assertion—and they do, time and time again.

Janine Booth is a busy woman. Her restaurants Root & Bone and Stiltsville Fish Bar have her splitting time between Miami and New York, so we’re particularly flattered when she stops by the MUNCHIES Test Kitchen to make us some sweet treats.

You might be familiar with Booth: Perhaps you’ve gotten the fried chicken at Root & Bone, which has been called “Manhattan’s Best,” or you might recognize her from season 11 of Top Chef. You may have also seen her on VICELAND’s Bong Appetit: Cook Off, where she learned to cook with weed for the first time. “I liked experimenting, it’s like a whole other pantry of ingredients,” she tells us with a laugh as she sets up. We won’t be cooking like that today, unfortunately, but it’ll be chill in a different way: midday cake and cocktails.

It’s rhubarb season, and Booth is making rhubarb two ways. The first is an upside-down cake, dolloped with rosewater whipped cream; while that’s in the oven, we’ll pull together a rhubarb cocktail, perfect for springtime sipping. “I love rhubarb. It looks like celery—it’s a vegetable—but people use it in a way that’s much more fruit-like,” Booth says. Though she was raised in Australia, her parents are Irish. “We would go back and forth, and my grandparents would let it grow wild. I grew up with it.”

The prep for the cake is easy. Booth butters a baking tin generously, adds a layer of parchment (we want this cake to come out as easily as possible), and cuts the rhubarb into pieces. She opts for diagonal cuts to make a stacked, geometric pattern, but you can get as creative—or keep it as simple—as you’d like. If you’ve never bought rhubarb, Booth tells us that picking by color helps. “The lighter the stalks are in color, the more tart they’re going to be,” she says.

In any case, rhubarb will require some sugar. “The butter is going to cook and create a sticky, sweet-tart caramel in the bottom,” Booth says, as she dashes sugar and even more butter onto the parchment-lined pan. Afterwards, she whips up a batter, which uses hazelnut flour for a toasty flavor. “It goes really nicely with the rhubarb. It ties it all together,” Booth tells us. Then, she arranges the rhubarb slices into the bottom of the pan, pours the batter on top, and into the oven it goes.

When the cake done, we’ll make an orange syrup and whip some cream to top the cake, but for now, it’s time to drink. Over the past few years in Miami, people have gotten much more into cocktails, she says, so her restaurants have played around more with their drink menus. This drink is a fun one: a sweet-tart sipper with a hint of heat.

Booth infuses simple syrup with rhubarb, ginger, and sliced jalapeño, then blends it with fresh strawberries—a bold choice, given she’s wearing a white shirt. After it’s shaken with ice and gin, the mixture goes into a highball glass and gets topped off with fizzy prosecco. As we sip, our weeks ease just a little.

With the cake out of the oven and cooling, Booth mixes up a rosewater whipped cream, a touch inspired by Australia’s prominent Persian food scene, she says. Finally, she makes another simple syrup, this time a mixture of orange juice and sugar, which we’ll drizzle onto slices before spooning on whipped cream and crushed hazelnuts. She flips the cake over onto a large plate, revealing its pretty decoration of rhubarb.

The cocktails have kept us happy, sure, but the cake is the star of the show—golden on the edges, with a pattern of pink across the top. Millennial pink never looked so appealing.