Rapunzel Rampion Salad

Cooking with my children is the highlight of my day. Especially, if the recipe is mentioned or relevant to a fairy tale that I have told them. Then they cannot wait to first help me with preparing and cooking the dish, and later eating all of it.

When I was little, I remember that my mother read me the Rapunzel fairy tale, and I was craving the rampion that the story referred to, and I continuously wondered my entire life what exactly it was. So now I am happy to be able to both tell my children the story of Rapunzel, but also to cook Rapunzel's salad with them.

Rapunzel Rampion Salad

Once upon a time, a lovely couple, lived next to a walled garden belonging to a witch.  The wife, experiencing cravings associated with the arrival of her long-awaited pregnancy, one day noticed rampions in the garden of the witch. She  so longed for this, desperate to the point of death.  So one night, the husband breaks into the garden to gather some for his wife. The husband returns to his wife and prepares a lovely salad for his wife.

The ingredients of the salad are: 

2 anchovy fillets
1 hard-cooked egg
2 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 teaspoon French mustard
1 pickled gherkin
3 springs chervil
2 teaspoon soy sauce
4 to 5 tablespoons tarragon vinegar
1 cooked beetroot
1 cold cooked potato
1 small celeriac
1 cooked rampion
Lettuce leaves

The husband first made a paste by mashing tuna and anchovies. Subsequently, he worked the egg yolk smooth with oil and mustard and mixed in the fish paste.  Afterward he mixed egg white, pickle, and chervil and mix all these together with soy and vinegar. Subsequently, he arrange the lettuce leaves in bowl, sliced the vegetables and put them in a bowl with lettuce, Finally, he poured the mixture over it all and tossed lightly the salad lightly.

The husband gave the salad to his wife, and the wife loved it. As a result, the wife asked her husband the day after again, to run over to the garden and get more rampion. On the third night of collecting rampion in the witches garden, the witch catches him and accuses him of being a thief. He begs for mercy, and the old woman agrees to be lenient, on condition that their unborn child should be surrendered to her at birth. Desperate, the man agrees.

When the baby girl is born, the witch takes the child to raise as her own, and names her Rapunzel.  Rapunzel grows up to be the most beautiful child in the world with long golden hair.

When Rapunzel reaches her twelfth year, the enchantress shuts her away in a tower in the middle of the woods, with neither stairs nor a door, and only one room and one window. When the witch visits Rapunzel, she stands beneath the tower and calls out:

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I may climb the golden stair. Upon hearing these words, Rapunzel would wrap her long hair around a hook beside the window, dropping it down to the enchantress, who would then climb up the hair to Rapunzel's tower room. 

One day, a prince rides through the forest and hears Rapunzel singing from the tower. Entranced by her ethereal voice, he searches for the girl and discovers the tower, but is naturally unable to enter, since there are big dangerous dragons in front of the tower. However, the prince is brave, so he kills all the dragons, so he can sit and listen to her beautiful singing, 

One day he sees the witch visit, and thus learns how to gain access to Rapunzel. When the witch is gone, he bids Rapunzel let her hair down. When she does so, he climbs up, makes her acquaintance, and eventually asks her to marry him. Rapunzel agrees. Together they plan a means of escape, wherein he will come each night and bring her silk that Rapunzel can weave into a ladder. However, unfortunately Rapunzel foolishly one day gives the prince away, as she asks the witch why it is easier for her to draw up the prince than her. In anger, the witch cuts short Rapunzel's braided hair and casts her out into the wilderness to fend for herself.

When the prince calls that night, the enchantress lets the severed braids down to haul him up. To his horror, he finds himself staring at the witch instead of Rapunzel, who is nowhere to be found. When the witch tells him in anger that he will never see Rapunzel again, the witch pushes him and he falls on the thorns, thus becoming blind.

For months he wanders through the wastelands of the country. One day, as Rapunzel sings while she fetches water, the prince hears Rapunzel's voice again, and they are reunited. When they fall into each others' arms, her tears immediately restore his sight and he can see his two baby boys that she has given birth to. The prince leads her to his kingdom, where they live happily ever after.