A Breakfast Sweetened with Raspberries

Somewhere amongst the “hour’s [of] culinary employment” this week, I have had very little to do with the process my own food has undergone. It’s like that you know, when you work, breath, live and make your days amongst food in an industrial kitchen. At the restaurant this week I ate a small bowl of Japanese curry made with a shot of espresso and chocolate; a cold fillet of salmon left over from the plat du jour; green beans bathed in white sesame; home-made granola with raspberries; my new favourite salad of grated carrot, toasted sunflower seeds and vinagrette and the most all consuming, smooth and entirely unexpecting Italian dried, then soaked, then cooked beans called Borlotti. There will be more on these at a later date.

And then to top it all off, flatmate and I went to Les Enfants Perdu where we had a dish I have eaten twice now. It consists of prawns, cabbage, mushrooms and a nutty tomato sauce, and I tell you, every single flavour that touches the tongue was intentionally chosen to inspire its consumer. The combination of the bisque and sautéed cabbage leaves you in a space where all you desire to do is create something in your own kitchen, perhaps a little less complicated than a bisque, and that in an amateur’s sense, something that reflects the hands-on process in the creation of food.

Our menu from Les Enfants Perdu

This week could only leave this fellow eater in a state of there is only so much food one can eat, which has been prepared in an industrial kitchen, until food becomes a little less than engaging.

“No artist can work simply for results, he must also like the work of getting them.”

Considering I am a lover of the work involved in getting the results imagined from the preparing and cooking experience, there has been yearning for that process to occur in my kitchen this week.




With leftover tofu in the fridge last night, I got out my hand-held-processor and whipped up white sesame tofu mouse again to have on a slice of grilled aubergine and a bed of rocket. And then this morning, in a tumultuous desire for my hands only to be amongst my own food, I created this:




You must be a lover of sweetness in the morning. You must be a lover of working for your food. You must be lover of grating apples and chopping almonds and you must be a lover of the whacking of different fruits together to create new combinations of brilliance.

If you are one who doesn’t enjoy, or on this particular morning can not be bothered, tackling a hand-held grater with a green apple, which is surprisingly hard to conquer well, you could of course keep the raspberries but substitute everything else for fromage blanc or natural yoghurt. And without using your hands nearly at all, you can still get something as beautiful as this:




But in a desire to use your hands and work for your rice bowl, I give you this...


A Breakfast Sweetened with Raspberries

½ granny smith apple, grated
1 Tbsp desiccated coconut
6 almonds, roughly chopped
a handful of fresh raspberries
½ banana, thinly sliced
1 tsp, freshly squeezed orange
2 semi-dried or fresh dates, roughly chopped

Bang that all together in a bowl and mix very well to ensure the apple does not clump but is surrounding everything.