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Put the flour in a large bowl.
Add the sugar, salt and the ground almonds to the flour.
Coarsely grate or finely dice the butter, then rub it into the dry ingredients with your fingertips, until the mix is fairly well combined but still lumpy – you shouldn’t be able to see butter, but nor should the mixture be homogenous.
Wet your hands with cold water, then briefly toss the dough until it’s in small clumps.
Spread these out on a lined baking tray and put in the freezer for 10 minutes, or chill for at least 20 minutes and up to 48 hours. (Alternatively, you can work well ahead and keep batches in the freezer for later use; you can bake the crumble mix straight from frozen).
Meanwhile, heat the oven to 200C (180C fan)/390F/gas 6.
Wash the rhubarb, then trim away any leaves or discoloured ends and chop the stalks into roughly 3cm lengths.
Put these, with the moisture from washing still clinging to them, in a medium baking dish just big enough to hold all the rhubarb (if your dish is too large, you’ll run out of topping).
Pour the demerara sugar evenly over the rhubarb and toss well to coat (you can use white or soft brown sugar, if you prefer, with the caveat that the darker the sugar, the darker the result. I sometimes substitute a few spoonfuls of syrup from the jar of stem ginger, or honey).
Add a pinch of spice, if you like – ginger or cinnamon work well, as does grated orange zest.
Tip the chilled crumble mix on top of the fruit, level it out reasonably evenly, then bake for about 30 minutes, until starting to colour.
Meanwhile, roughly chop the extra nuts, if using, then, when the half-hour is up, scatter these on top of the crumble and bake for 10 minutes more, until the topping is crisp and golden and the fruit below bubbling.
Serve with custard, cream or ice-cream.
Notes
If you don't want to use ground nuts simply sub the same quantity of flour.
Use any fruit - even under ripe stone fruit.
You can add some syrup and finally diced stem ginger