Spring in the Paintings and on the Plate
Rhubarb Pudding

Spring brings not only enrichment to our daily menu. Many poets and writers were enchanted by this unique season. Lots of songs are about the spring and it is also immortalized in many paintings, for example of impressionists. Albrecht Dürer, the German painter and printmaker, painted wild spring flowers like dandelion, greater plantain, common daisy and yarrow in his famous painting The Great Piece of Turf. Giuseppe Arcimboldo, an Italian painter of the 16^th century, is known for creating a portrait head of a young man made of flowers and his chest made of green leaves. You can identify more than 80 plants in the painting.

However, maybe the most beautiful image of spring is the painting La Primavera (Spring) from Sandro Botticelli (1482) which you should not miss if you visit the Uffizi Gallery in Florence in Italy.

One of the nine figures in the painting is Flora, a goddess of flowers and spring in Roman mythology. Her white dress is decorated with flowers and she is wearing a flower wreath on her neck. She is casting roses from her dress on the flower meadow below. The painting is a poetic metaphor for the first breath of spring. There are almost 500 different plants, 130 of which are real, they can be identified by their botanical names although the painter did not always paint their proper leaves. Here, you can see crocuses, violets, poppies, daisies, marigolds or forget-me-not among the flowers.

And here you have a spring recipe!

Rhubarb Pudding

We need:

300 g rhubarb

butter

6 crispbreads

1-2 tbsp chopped almonds

250 ml milk

2 eggs

4 tbsp fine crystal (or brown) sugar

Method:

Wash rhubarb and cut it into small pieces. Preheat the oven to 170°C. Grease a glass form with butter. Smear the crispbreads with the rest of the butter and put them on the bottom of the form. Scatter almonds over them. Whip yolks with milk and 1,5 tbsp sugar. Layer rhubarb pieces on the crispbreads and pour the yolk mixture over. Bake for 20 minutes. Whisk egg whites with the rest of the sugar, spread it on the top of the pudding and bake for 15 minutes more at 150°C. Serve warm.

Text: © Copyright Ingrid, Travelpotpourri
Fotos: © Copyright Ingrid, Travelpotpourri