This sweet and sour roasted salmon is ready in no time.

It’s easy to forget that rhubarb is a vegetable. Most of the time, you’ll find it buried, like a fruit, under an avalanche of sugar baked into a cake, crumble either cakeor maybe simmered in a compote.

But rhubarb It’s not just for dessert. With an invigorating acidity reminiscent of citrus or pomegranate and without annoying seeds, it adds brightness and flavor to all kinds of savory dishes. It also gives it body, cooking in a thick sauce with a smooth, meaty texture much like a tomato (an actual fruit), though stronger and pinker.

My favorite way to show off the savory side of rhubarb is to use it as a topping for rich ingredients like fatty meats, buttery sauces, and oily fish, which the acidity of the stalks cuts like a lightsaber. Think vinegar, but with precision and finesse.

In this recipe, I combine the pink rhubarb with an even more pink color. salmon fillets for a simple weekday meal with the color of the sunset.

First, simmer the rhubarb until it dissolves into a sauce, enriched with spicy fresh ginger, rice vinegar, and scallions. Adding enough sugar controls the acidity, but feel free to add a bit more if you like, as long as the sauce doesn’t slip into compote territory (in which case, save it for your morning yogurt).

When the sauce reaches a perfect balance of sweet and sour, drizzle some over the fish fillets before grilling. This allows the rhubarb strands to sear and caramelize on the high heat of the oven. Then, serve the rest of the rhubarb mixture on the side for a fresher, punchier bite.

If you can find deep red rhubarb stalks, they will give you the most vivid presentation. The green stems, while just as tasty, cook to a listless beige and aren’t nearly as pretty. Still, that’s nothing a fancy garnish of chive leaves can’t fix.

You can substitute other fillets for the salmon, but proceed with care. You need a strong-tasting fish to withstand this loud sauce. Mackerel, swordfish, bluefish and tuna hold their own very well. But soft fillets like cod, flounder, and halibut will quickly overwhelm. Rhubarb is not for finicky proteins.

I love this dish on a bed of buttery rice, which soaks up the flavors of the salmon and sauce and smooths them out perfectly.

Rhubarb is always a cheery dessert, but to really get to know it, bring it to dinner.