It’s the start of January, and for many of us that means an end to the indulgences of the Christmas season and renewed resolutions to eat healthily – good, fresh foods, sensible portion sizes and the five-a-day of fruit and veg. What better recipe, then, than one for an African-style fruit salad inspired by Burning Embers?

Fruit features throughout the meals in Burning Embers, because it’s a key part of Kenyan cuisine. Towards the end of the book, Rafe lays out a breakfast fit for a queen for Coral: champagne, freshly squeezed pineapple juice, scrambled ostrich eggs, caviar, toast, exotic jams, eucalyptus honey, coffee and Coral’s favourite fruit salad. The following recipe is just what I had in mind for this breakfast. Enjoy!

Ingredients – choose from the following:

Passion fruit
Banana
Guava
Mango
Melon
Orange
Papaya
Peach
Pineapple

1. Cut up as you like and mix in a bowl.
2. For flavour, you can add mint leaves, sugar, honey, coconut milk, pineapple juice or orange juice. If you want to keep the fruit fresh, a couple of squirts of lemon juice does the job. In some parts of Africa, they add crushed peanuts and avocado as well.
3. Serve as it is, or with some natural yoghurt or sorbet (lemon is very resfreshing). Or if you prefer, throw the salad in a blender and blitz to a delicious and detoxifying smoothie.