Iles du Printemps (Spring Isles)

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What spring is all about. Like painting with flavors (Rcp# 38)

Ingredients for ‘Iles du Printemps’

For the ‘Island Vegetation’:

  • 6 – 8 stalks of fresh rhubarb (about 400 – 450 g before and 300 – 400 g after stripping of peel and cutting off hard parts, medium size = about the thickness of a thumb on average, not too big and hard)
  • 500 – 600 g fresh spinach leaves
  • 200 g of a mild feta cheese (ours is usually plant-based and based on almonds or coconut, the original Mediterranean feta cheese is made from goat and sheep milk)
  • 10 tablespoons of red grape juice (about 150 ml, pure juice, no added sugar)
  • 2 tablespoons fresh or frozen chives (washed and finely minced)
  • 2 tablespoons agave syrup
  • 2 tablespoons of a mild canola oil (plus additional canola oil for frying)
  • 1 – 1 ½ teaspoons smoked sea salt
  • A pinch of freshly ground nutmeg
  • Ground caraway seeds (about one small knife tip)

For the ‘Island Bedrock’:

  • 2 – 4 sweet potatoes (about 700 – 800 g with peel and 500 – 550 g without, a medium sweet potato usually weighs about 200 g, if the sweet potato has been in storage for a long time, you might need a little more than with fresh sweet potatoes)
  • 10 tablespoons fine buckwheat flakes (soft, like oatmeal)
  • 3 – 4 turnips (carrots, parsnips or parsley root, about 250 g with peel and 150 – 180 g without)
  • 3 tablespoons virgin coconut oil
  • Optional (only, if making the patties in advance): 150 ml broth -> see [‘Vegetable Broth’] or hot water

Cooking Instructions for ‘Iles du Printemps’

For the ‘Island Vegetation’:

  1. Make a marinade from the grape juice, the canola oil, the chives (washed and finely minced), the agave syrup, the nutmeg, the caraway and the smoked sea salt (careful here or the marinade gets too salty, depending on the quality of the smoked sea salt you use).
  2. Wash and ‘strip off’ the rhubarb (means: gently pull off the hard stringy part on the outside) and cut out/off hard/bad parts. Cut the cleaned rhubarb diagonally (‘baguette style’) into pieces of about 3–5 cm long. Place the sliced rhubarb in the marinade. Cover and cool for 1-2 hours, turning frequently.

    *** This would be a good time to start preparing the island ‘bedrocks’ (see instructions below) ***
  3. Wash the spinach and cut off the ends of the stems or any other spoiled parts. Cut the the stems from the spinach and divide them into into pieces of about 1 – 1 ½ cm long. Set all the cut stems aside in a bowl. Place a stack of about 5 to 7 layers of spinach leaves (without stems) on a cutting board. Using a sharp knife, slice into rhombic pieces of about 4 – 6 cm side length (crosscutting like a diagonal chess board).
  4. Take a frying pan a little bigger than medium. Put a little canola oil in, just enough to cover the bottom 2–3 tablespoons). Saute the spinach stalks until tender. You can tell by the bright forest green color of the pieces (the original color is darker and dull).
  5. Reduce the heat, then use a fork to take the rhubarb pieces out of the marinade and add them to the spinach stalks. Saute both together, until the rhubarb is tender, but has not yet fallen apart.
  6. Put the chopped spinach leaves into the pan and add the remaining marinade. Heat up everything together and saute until the spinach leaves are a bright dark green color, then turn off the heat and remove the pan from the heat.
  7. Cut the feta cheese into sugar cube sized pieces and add to the pan. Fold them under the sautéed rhubarb and spinach mixture.

For the ‘Island Bedrock’:

  1. Peel the sweet potatoes and the turnips. Then run them over a fine grating board (like the kind used for for Parmigiano cheese). Mix the grated sweet potatoes and turnips with the fine buckwheat flakes and the slightly warmed coconut oil (in flakes). Let everything rest together in a cold place (refrigerator).
  2. Form the dough into patties. To make the patties, take a piece of dough about the size of an apricot and shape it into into a flat, round cushion about a finger thick.
  3. Preheat the oven to 175 °C (fan assisted plus top and bottom heat). Place the cool patties on baking paper on a cold baking sheet. Once the sheet is full, place it in the oven on the middle rack. Bake the patties for 35 – 45 minutes, turning them after 20 minutes.

*** After you have put the patties into the oven, continue working on the ‘Island Vegetation’ (see above from section 3). Then both parts will be ready together. Unless, of course, you have baked the patties beforehand (see ‘More options’ below).***

Serve the ‘Island Vegetation’ (mix from pan) on top of the ‘Island Bedrock’ (sweet potato patties).

Makes 3 – 4 servings.

More options:

  • You can make the ‘Island Bedrock’ patties in advance. In this case, heat up the optional broth from the patty ingredient list and soak the buckwheat flakes in it. When cooled to hand warm, add the coconut oil and mix everything with the grated sweet potatoes and turnips. After that continue with the standard preparations. You can either bake the patties and store them in the fridge for 1–2 days or freeze them after baking and cooling (separate with heavy-duty baking paper, oil if necessary).
  • You can also use frozen spinach for the ‘Island Vegetation’ as well, but the flavor will not be the same. If you do not have fresh spinach available, sauté the marinated rhubarb (without the liquid) in a saucepan with 2–3 tablespoons of canola oil until tender, but not falling apart. Reduce the heat to low. Then add the frozen (!) and coarsely chopped spinach along with the rhubarb marinade from and heat everything up together. As soon as the bright forest green of the spinach indicates the perfect moment, turn off the heat and add the feta cheese cubes.

Side Notes:

  1. The baguette cut is something I learned during one of my college jobs – yes, I had quite a few jobs involving food at the time. When you have a baguette, it is usually long and thin. To get bigger slices, this particular bread is not sliced straight across, but diagonally. Try it with a thin loaf of bread or even a roll. This technique will increase the size of the piece of bread and the space for packing it with goodies. Applying this technique to the rhubarb will result in pieces that are not only larger, but also flatter overall and therefore easier to fry.
  2. This dish makes an excellent starter. But then you only need half a recipe for about five people. Or even with a bigger crowd and just one ‘island’ on the plate, it still fills you up considerably as a first course.
  3. France and food have a magical connection. Whether it is the heartfelt hospitality, the great attention to detail in the preparation, or the passion for complex meals and long, multi-course feasts at the open table (at the end there is always ‘some cheese’). Unfortunately, my knowledge of the French language is very limited. Still, I give this dish a French name to honor a wonderful food tradition and the lovely people who fill it with life.

Please note: For all my recipes (text) on this blog (By MagS, Parsley-Lane Blog) I grant a CC license under the terms of BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). For further explanations, please see the Legal Notice or visit creativecommons.org.