Transform your french toast in 5 minutes

new Mexican in London, being a diet coke whore

today’s recipe: it’s the caramelisation on these dates and mashed fried banana that seriously elevates this french toast

Food news of the week:

Excited to dish the goods on cool new chick Fonda in today’s review, and I’ve not been this excited for the recipe section in a while! If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’ve done everything from black sesame to savoury roasted grape variations of my favourite breakfast. And I can’t stop, won’t stop.

After a visit to the dry-aged experts over at Maru, and disappointing revisits to Umu (no but really, who gave them a Michelin star?) and Chisou means that my holy omakase trinity in London remains to be: Maru, Roji, and Cubé who seamlessly merge elegant simplicity with boundless artistic expression. In the vein of Japanese fare, there is a significant positive correlation between the way you eat yakitori or Japanese BBQ, and the extent to which you enjoy it, which I divulge in the last section.

Science of the week:

My macadamia nut snacks don’t exactly cancel out my 3.30pm diet coke habit, and I was intrigued to understand the true extent of different artificial sweeteners on our guts. This study highlighted the effect of the most common sweeteners most of us have right in our homes, such as saccharin, sucralose and aspartame (in diet drinks). It was found that saccharin and sucralose were the worst, impairing our glucose tolerance. To all my fellow diet coke lovers, sadly aspartame still reduces our beneficial bacteria populations (Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium), and may lead to glucose intolerance. This is bad because it’s like a little stone that causes this huge ripple effect, wreaking havoc in your body. Elevated glucose = insulin resistance, which creates a whole host of metabolic issues and increases inflammation in the body. Maybe weekly diet cokes are better….?

Insight of the week:

Watched Fight Club for the first time last week, because I’m still haunted by that time someone I dated told me that he couldn’t throw any references at me because I’ve watched basically nothing. Watching Brad Pitt thrash around before catching Book of Mormon made each somehow more profound, with both exploring this idea of conformity, personal identity, and agency. One rejects societal roles, while the other misguidedly attempts to change the world, but both to do the same thing: to seek purpose.

Recipe of the week:

This was, in short, my best decision this week. Soft and fluffy french toast drizzled with warm peanut butter and honey, made with slightly stale brioche, liberal sprinkles of coarse salt cutting through all the sweet. Bog-standard eggy bread makes for a good time anyway on its own, but it’s the caramelisation on these dates and mashing the banana before layering it thin on the pan to fry that really bring this to a totally different level.

Time required: 5-10 minutes from start to finish

Peanut Banana French Toast with Seared Dates (makes a generous portion for one, scale up as required for more people)

Ingredients

2 eggs

2 slices thick 1 or 2-day old brioche

1/4 cup (60ml) whole milk

fat pinch of coarse salt

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp honey

1 tbsp butter

2 tbsp peanut butter (I used chunky)

3 dates, cored and halved

1 small ripe banana

Directions

In a medium bowl large enough to fit at least one of your bread slices, whisk together the eggs, milk, cinnamon and honey. Heat a large pan on medium-high heat and add a tablespoon of butter to it. Place your thick slices of brioche in the eggy batter and let those marinate for a good 10 seconds before flipping and letting the other sides soak.