Star Tribune: “Rhubarb Ketchup at MCFM”

By Rick Nelson, Star Tribune

June 17, 2009

With her rhubarb ketchup, Susan Dietrich has found a clever use for June’s tart red stalks. Not that she’ll take any credit for it. “You’re going to think that I don’t have an original idea in my head,” she said with a laugh. Hardly. Mill City Farmers Market shoppers who regularly peruse Dietrich’s Very Prairie stand know to expect the unexpected, so why not a tangy rhubarb condiment?

Rhubarb-loving friends pelted her with suggestions. One steered Dietrich toward a Jean-Georges Vongerichten recipe; another pal, mindful of Dietrich’s locavore — or, in her case, “prairievore” — roots, proposed adding orange-infused Ratafia from Alexis Bailly Vineyards in Hastings. “Oh, wait, I did come up with using buckwheat honey [from Ames Farm Honey] in place of sugar,” said Dietrich. “Buckwheat and rhubarb are in the same family, so there’s a synergy there.