In the pink

I'm standing in a remote farmyard in front of a huge low windowless shed. Inside, through a bizarre process of force-feeding and light deprivation, one of the most glorious and highly prized foods in the world is being produced. It is a product of such phenomenal flavour and such rare beauty, that gourmets will go to extreme lengths to procure it. We're a thousand miles from the foie gras centres of Strasbourg in Carlton, Yorkshire. Welcome to the Rhubarb Triangle.

Rhubarb has always thrived here between Wakefield, Leeds and Bradford but it was in the 1870s that the technique of 'forcing' was discovered. The secret was kept to the area and to a few families. Fortunes were made and the names Cartlidge, Wade, Asquith, Smith, Dobson, and Oldroyd graced the boxes that filled the daily 'Rhubarb Express' to the London vegetable markets.

Of the great rhubarb dynasties only one survives. Janet Oldroyd-Hulme, her husband Neil and their sons James and Lindsay continue the tradition into the fifth generation.

Neil is my guide to the forcing sheds. A quiet and unaffected Yorkshireman, he is nonetheless bubbling with passion for his crop. From a central packing room in an anonymous concrete farm building three low doors lead into blackness. As we duck in and our eyes acclimatise the overwhelming sense is distance and awe.

Each shed contains 20,000 rhubarb plants, eerily pink by the crepuscular light of a single forty-watt bulb. There's a not unpleasant ammoniacal smell, oddly appropriate in such sepulchral surroundings, and deep calm silence.

"Most people just go quiet, says Neil, one TV crew played church music".

Occasionally there's a quiet plopping sound like celery snapping. Neil says it's the sound of the buds bursting but I can't help thinking of the ghastly pods in 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers'.

Between December and March before ordinary rhubarb sprouts, two-year-old roots are moved indoors and kept in nutritious soil, warmth, moisture and absolute darkness. Searching for light, the plants put out shoots at incredible speed creating a beautiful champagne pink stem or 'stick' with pale yellow leaves.

To produce such a delicate and fragile plant there's a surprising amount of unpleasantly mucky work. The 'crown' or root mass of the plant is grown in good but heavy soil that restricts growth to a manageable clump of carrot-like 'fangs'.

Each crown is lifted, as it begins to shoot, along with a two-foot cube of soil. It's manhandled inside and placed in regular ranks on the earth floor of the shed. There's no machine that can handle this task and the fangs mustn't be damaged. On a cold day, in the shadow of the Pennines, when the soil is wet and heavy the work is back-breaking.

After 5-6 weeks in the sheds, watered with sprinklers and heated by huge gas burners the sticks are manually harvested, by candlelight, to prevent any strong light turning the remaining crop green.

Forced rhubarb has a sophisticated, complex, flavour combining sweetness, tartness and a gentle - not overpowering - aromatic note. When cooked it takes on a glistening pink, jewel-like quality which begs to be mounded into a champagne coup and heaped with creamy Greek yoghourt. Its sweet/sour flavour makes it a terrific and unexpected accompaniment to duck, mackerel and even lamb.

Today, rhubarb is forced on an industrial scale in Holland but the micro-climate and traditional methods of this small corner of Yorkshire create an undeniably superior product. Last year, several producers began the application procedure for Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée status.

The farmers of the Rhubarb Triangle are convinced that their crop deserves a place on the international top table - that before long Yorkshire forced rhubarb will sit next to foie gras, the great cheeses and the world's best wines. Try some and you'll agree.