There’s a jug of rhubarb cordial in my fridge. Unlike the Schiaparelli-pink wands from which it was made, the drink, once diluted, becomes a soft pinky-grey, the kind of colour interior designers might declare ‘on trend’ some time soon. 

The cordial is a by-product of the ice cream below. If you bake rhubarb in the oven – the best way to cook it as it keeps its shape – strain off some of the juice, heat it with sugar and funnel the liquid into a clean bottle. It will be fine for a month in the fridge.

In the past I wouldn’t have done this. Every year my mum announced the arrival of forced rhubarb. She would come home from Mitchells’ greengrocer’s and open her package – it was always wrapped in newspaper, just like the huge bunches of parsley – allowing the colour to flood our kitchen. 

It meant rhubarb crumble – the fruit lying under an almond-scented blanket – or rhubarb and custard. These are humble yet excellent dishes – I would rather eat rhubarb crumble than any other kind (rhubarb can really stand up to that sweet buttery topping) – but it never occurred to me to make anything beyond pudding with it.

Now I make sweet-tart rhubarb pickles, cooking lengths briefly in vinegary syrups flavoured with juniper berries, caraway or star anise, to go with pork, duck and fatty fish, such as mackerel. In Afghanistan, rhubarb and spinach are made into a curry, in Poland it’s cooked with potatoes, and in Sweden I’ve had sweet-sour roast rhubarb as an accompaniment to roast chicken.

In Iran they make lamb and rhubarb khoresh – a braise – and, even more hunger-inducing, in Kurdistan they cook rhubarb with yellow split peas. It’s difficult to get your head round the idea of rhubarb with turmeric and saffron but, finished off with a gardenful of herbs (coriander, mint, dill and parsley), there’s nothing like it. It makes the pork chop below – where rhubarb is combined with coriander, fennel and chilli – look quite tame, but that chop is a good place to start.

In sweet dishes the pleasure of rhubarb comes in contrasts, a mouthful of sourness mixed with creamy rice pudding or tart stripes of baked rhubarb in a bread-and-butter pudding. But I particularly love rhubarb desserts that are less sweet – a bright-pink rhubarb, lime and ginger sorbet or the rhubarb and passion-fruit ice cream here. Cream softens flavours, but rhubarb and passion fruit combined make as mouth-puckering an ice cream as you can get.

When I lay out those pink wands on a steel-grey day, I’m thrilled by their colour – and happy there are so many dishes I can make with them. Where do I begin?

Pork chops with fennel and sweet-sour rhubarb relish

It’s important to get really good chops for this dish, which means going to a great butcher or ordering online from one. It will be more expensive than the supermarket but this isn’t a midweek dish, it’s a treat. And don’t overcook the meat! The relish is also good with gammon, duck and pork terrines.