Leslie Kenton herb feature

Recipes This Week

Explore the infinite possibilities of creating wonderful meals for all occasions with minimum effort and maximum fun.

Leslie Kenton health and beauty expert PHOTOGRAPH

In India, the best foods are often those you buy in the cheapest cafés because they have been made with love and joy (sometimes with humor too). The word ‘café’ is really a euphemism, for these places are little more than a few stone slabs within which a fire has been built for cooking. Yet the foods they sell are infinitely better tasting, more nourishing and ‘safer’ (less likely to cause Delhi belly) than all the fancy foods you get in India’s expensive restaurants. It doesn’t matter how skillful, knowledgeable and important a cook is either. If he or she doesn’t invest the food with affection then it’s dead food, not energy food.

Leslie Kenton health and beauty expert PHOTOGRAPH

PAPAYA BANANA SMOOTHIE

serves 1

What you need

1 small papaya
1/2 -1 ripe banana (preferably organic)
2 ice cubes, crushed
honey (optional)

Here’s how

Peel and seed the papaya and cut it into chunks. Peel and slice the banana. Purée together in a food processor, add the ice and purée until smooth. Pour into a chilled glass and serve at once with small bowls of nuts and seeds if you want to nibble as well. Add honey if you feel the drink needs sweetening.

Other ways to go

Yellow delight: Try a mango-pineapple combination.

Secrets of the orange: Use pineapple and the juice of a fresh orange with a squeeze of lemon.

Protein power: For a more sustaining drink add a raw free-range organic egg and some freshly grated nutmeg.

Winter treat: Fresh is best, but dried fruit soaked overnight is an easy option in winter when you can’t get the real thing. Try cranberries with sun-dried apricots, figs, prunes or peaches with a banana. Use some of the soak water. It is delicious and filled with minerals.

Papaya, mango, guava, pineapple, banana … tropical fruits conjure up visions of the tropics – lazing by bright azure water. Bring this feeling into dark winter days with a papaya banana smoothie for breakfast. It is quick to make, to drink – even to digest. Raw papaya contains a protein-digesting enzyme called papain. Some anti-aging enthusiasts believe that eating fresh papaya regularly helps clear out necrotic proteins, detoxifying the body and helping to prevent premature aging. So powerful is this enzyme that you can even use fresh papaya to tenderize meat and make it more easily digested. This luscious fruit supplies some 60 mg of vitamin C and more than 800 mcg of carotenoids. Always use ripe papaya and, if you have time after peeling the fruit, rub the inside of the peel over your face. It is a natural exfoliator – one used for centuries before cosmetic companies discovered fruit acids and began to charge a fortune for them.

Wonderful life-giving foods, and information about what some of them can do to help prevent premature aging, protect you from degenerative conditions such as diabetes, cancer and heart disease, enhance your mood, intensify your delight in love-making, even encourage sleep inspired me to write Cook Energy, for help for all of these things is to be found in delicious foods.

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