Grain-free sweet potato croquettes

"I learned not to fear infinity,
The far field, the windy cliffs of forever,
The dying of time in the white light of tomorrow,
The wheel turning away from itself,
The sprawl of the wave,
The on-coming water."

From The Far Field, Theodore Roethke

I have been obsessed with time lately.

What’s time? Where does it come from? What is the arrow of time? Does time flow? Does time exist at all? Or is it just an empirical experience we, humans, make of it (time passes too fast, too slowly, time has stopped…)? Time is such a timeless subject.

What I've learnt (learnt again) so far is the following.

-          Time dilation (relativity, hello Einstein!)/different times: time is a profoundly intimate experience (intimate, yes): your time is not my time. Each person experiences the passage of time differently. Because time is related to space (space time continuum), there is a close link between the motion through space and the passage of time: the more time I have, the less space I have and the more space I have the less time I have.

-          The notions of past/present/future might be an illusion: if you take time as an unfolding of “nows” (moments) and line them up in space, you can see that a slice of time can be different, depending from which angle you look at it. So past, present and future all exist. Our nows are different, that’s all.

-          The arrow of time/directionality of time: we can move in space in all directions but it feels like we can move in time in only direction, forward. The laws of physics allow time to have different directions but time has a directionality because of entropy. There is a tendency of “things” to go to a very ordered state to a disordered state as it’s “easier” to move from ordered to disordered because there are more ways of being disordered. 

I think each of us has an intuitive understanding of time but when it comes down to explaining it, we’re all faced with a number of issues/questions. Here are those who bother me most:

Is time an arena or a substance?

Is it fundamental or is it emergent from something that does not contain it?

Any thoughts?

Sweet potato croquettes
(vegan, grain-free)

one medium sweet potato (you'll need 150 g purée)
10 g coconut flour
pepper, salt
30 g walnuts and hemp seeds (I used 20g walnuts, 10g hemp)
plant milk (I used walnut milk)


Pre-heat oven to 200°C and roast the sweet potato until very tender. Cooking time depends on the size of the sweet potato. I roasted mine for about 40 minutes. In the meantime, using a mortar, grind the walnuts until finely chopped. Add in the hemp seeds.
Once roasted, let the sweet potato cool for a while and scoop flesh onto a large plate, purée with a potato masher until very smooth. Alternatively, you can purée the sweet potato in a food processor (but that's a lot of fuss (mainly washing-up) for little). Transfer into a bowl, add in the coconut flour, pepper, salt. Mix well to combine, you should get a drier sweet potato purée that you can form into small croquettes. If it's still too moist, add very little coconut flour. Form croquettes, or nuggets, or balls with the palms of your hands. Dip them in walnut milk and then roll them in the walnut and hemp seed crumbs.
Place on a baking rack lined with parchment paper and bake for 10 minutes at 170°C. You can flip them halfway through baking if you want the crust to be evenly crisp.
I served mine with garlicky sauteed swiss chards and pesto.


Nuggets de patate douce
(végétalien, sans gluten)

une patate douce moyenne (il faut 150 g de purée)
10 g farine de noix de coco
sel, poivre
30 g noix de Grenoble et graines de chanvre décortiquées
lait végétak (j'ai utilisé du lait de noix)

Préchauffer le four à 200°C et faire rôtir la patate douce jusqu'à ce que la chair soit tendre. Le temps de cuisson dépend de la taille de la patate douce. J'ai fait cuire la mienne environ 40 minutes.

Pendant que la patate cuit, réduire les noix en poudre assez grossière. Ajouter les graines de chanvre.

Une fois cuite, laisser la patate refroidir un moment puis évider la chair, en faire de la purée au presse-purée (ou au blender). 

Dans un bol, mélanger 150 g de purée avec la farine de noix de coco, le sel et le poivre. Former des nuggets avec la pâte. Si la pâte est encore trop humide, ajouter un peu plus de farine de coco.

Tremper chaque nugget dans le lait puis rouler les dans la chapelure de noix et chanvre.

Placer sur une plaque de cuisson et cuire 10 minutes à 170°C. Retourner à mi-cuisson pour qu'ils soient bien dorés sur chaque face. J'ai servi mes nuggets avec du vert de carde sauté à l'ail et du pesto.