What painful dilemma do Chefs wrestle with in their hard lives when they get up in the morning on a day off?
What would I eat?
It’s a personal thing obviously, but I’d rather be hungry than eat something… not even that it’s unpleasant, but just not what I actually wanted.
Nobody judges my dishes as harshly as I do myself. If I had a guest that fussy, I’d tell them to fuck off.
And I’ve got 6 km to the shop, let’s remember that. So breakfast gets improvised from whatever’s in the fridge. And personally I really can’t be arsed spending more than a few minutes in the kitchen.
This time that problem turned into cold soup) with beans. Thrown together quick from whatever I found.
INGREDIENTS:
Soy yoghurt 400 g (standard tub) (see Variants)
Green cucumber 150 g
Cooked or tinned white beans 240–250 g (240 g, that’s the standard drained weight from a tin)
smoked salt
chilli (to taste but at least 1 small one)
1–2 tomatoes (approx. 150 g)
lemon or lime juice (see Variants)
for croutons: stale roll or bread
METHOD:
Best to start with the croutons.
Chop the roll or bread and bake for about 10 minutes at 150°C.
If you haven’t got a mini oven, you can use a dry, good non-stick pan instead.
While the croutons are baking, blend all the other ingredients, EXCEPT THE TOMATOES, together until smooth.
Season with smoked salt. The chłodnik should be a bit oversalted.
Cut the stalk bits off the tomatoes and dice them. Add to the chłodnik, stir.
VARIANTS:
I used my own homemade soy yoghurt, long-fermented, intense, sour, with that characteristic bitter edge natural soy yoghurts have.
Of course you can use other yoghurts, not even necessarily soy. But then, to get what you’re after, you’ll need to add lemon or lime juice so the yoghurt is clearly sour.
NOTES:
Best if all the ingredients come straight from the fridge, that gives you an extra sensory experience while eating.
Eating is a specific and deep experience, it engages different senses: sight, taste, smell, touch. In that way it’s similar to sex.
The contrast of hot croutons and cold liquid adds another layer to the sensory experience, the temperature difference.
SERVING:
Serve with hot croutons.
A few days’ break between two big events. Sunday, the day after a walk of a dozen-odd kilometres round Hamburg (well, 3.5 km of that was from the bus to home).
On one hand I really couldn’t be bothered making breakfast.
On the other, I know a lot of hard work’s coming up soon, and after yesterday it’s a bit like after a training day, and if I don’t eat properly, I will keel over.
And properly in this case means a lot of protein. There’s probably, roughly, give or take, eyeballing it, about 30 grams in this bowl. Necessary if you’re moving a lot (16 kilometres isn’t massively much, but it’s above average for a 60-year-old).
Hence the beans. And the fact that I ate breakfast at all.
Dinner was easier. And dinner was a proper blinder. Photo coming on sm.
The kitchen is my space for lifestyle medicine.
I'm not a dietitian or a doctor – I'm a chef, and a member of the Polish Society of Lifestyle Medicine. Nutrition is essential to a modern kitchen, and that's nothing new: working from Hippocratic dietetic principles was part of a cook's craft centuries ago. At Rude Kitchen I tie that tradition to modern science — and to lifestyle. Read more about how I bring cooking and lifestyle medicine together on the About page.