Spring Rhubarb Cobbler with Buttermilk Biscuits

Rhubarb announces spring before almost anything else. While the rest of the garden still sleeps, those pink and crimson stalks push through cold soil, tart and alive and impossible to ignore. At the market, they arrive in bundles with leaves still attached, and you should buy them that way. The leaves are a sign of freshness, even though you will cut them off and compost them.

A cobbler asks almost nothing of the cook. You slice the rhubarb, toss it with sugar to draw out its juices, then drop buttermilk biscuit dough on top and let the oven do the rest. The fruit softens and thickens into something between a sauce and a jam. The biscuits bake golden on top while their bottoms absorb just enough of that ruby liquid to turn slightly jammy. This is the whole point.

I do not add strawberries. The pairing is common, but it masks what makes rhubarb remarkable: that pucker, that brightness, that insistence on being itself. Let things taste of what they are. A drizzle of cold cream at the table is all it needs.