Three seasonal smoothies I make in Marseille

Coming out of the water at the Pointe Rouge, feet still wet on the pontoon, someone almost always asks me the same thing: what should I eat when I get home? Nine times out of ten I say a smoothie, because it takes five minutes and it goes down even when the heat has flattened your appetite. With one reservation. Half the smoothies I see on Instagram are puddings dressed up as a healthy breakfast, and it does irritate me.

The three recipes below are ones I genuinely make at home, with whatever the Prado market has on a Saturday morning. The first is light and fresh, the second will hold you together after an hour on the board, and the evening one I drink on the days when I am not hungry but ought to eat something anyway. As for kit, a cheap blender is plenty, plus a knife that actually cuts and a jar with a lid if you want to take the glass with you. I will start with the method, because once you have it in your head the recipes become optional.

How I put a glass together

• A liquid, 150 to 200 ml: water, coconut water, unsweetened plant milk, or a herbal infusion you have left to cool. Add it last and in small amounts, since it is what settles the texture.
• One dominant fruit. A banana, a pear, a handful of strawberries. Past that the flavour goes muddy and the sugars pile up without you noticing.
• A low-sugar vegetable: fresh spinach, cucumber, raw courgette, fennel. It brings substance and micronutrients.
• A fat, with a bit of protein: almond butter, hemp seeds, a few walnuts, plain yoghurt. Without it I get a dip an hour later, every single time, and I end up standing in front of the biscuit cupboard.
• Something sharp. Lemon, ginger, mint, cinnamon. Barely anything by weight, and yet it is usually what makes you want to make the thing again.

The spring one: strawberry, cucumber, mint

1. 01Wash 200 g of strawberries and hull them. Pick ones that are red the whole way through, since they carry all the sugar in the recipe.
2. 02Peel half a cucumber and cut it into chunks. If it is young, firm and well washed, leave the skin on.
3. 03Add ten or so fresh mint leaves, the juice of half a lime and a tablespoon of hemp seeds.
4. 04Pour in 150 ml of very cold water, blend for a minute, then loosen it a splash at a time until it runs slowly off a spoon.
5. 05Drink it within the hour, unsweetened. If your strawberries are on the sharp side, a quarter of a banana rounds it off.

The post-session one: banana, almond, cacao

1. 01Mash a very ripe banana roughly with a fork before it goes in the jug, the blender has less work to do and the texture comes out more even.
2. 02Add a heaped tablespoon of wholenut almond butter, a teaspoon of unsweetened cacao and a pinch of cinnamon.
3. 03Salt it lightly. You sweat a great deal standing on a board in full sun, and that pinch matters more than people expect.
4. 04Top it up with 200 ml of unsweetened plant milk, or plain yoghurt loosened with water if you want more protein, then two ice cubes.
5. 05Blend until it is thick, almost chewable. This one counts as a whole snack, so plan your appetite around it.

The evening one: pear, fennel, ginger

1. 01Brew a chamomile infusion and leave it to cool, it serves as the liquid. Water works too, with less roundness to it.
2. 02Quarter a ripe pear, take the core out, and leave the skin on if it is organic.
3. 03Slice a quarter of a fennel bulb thinly and grate a centimetre of fresh ginger.
4. 04Add a few basil leaves, pour in 150 ml of the cooled infusion, and blend for a good while: raw fennel holds out far longer than soft fruit.
5. 05Serve it at room temperature, a good two hours before bed. Ice cold, I find it unpleasant and it sits heavily.

So what about the sugar in fruit?

That question turns up at every workplace workshop, usually towards the end, in a meeting room with no windows. Blended fruit is still whole fruit, nothing has been taken out, the material is simply finer. Fibre slows the sugars on their way into the blood, we have known that for a long time, and it is why I keep the pulp in. Trouble comes from accumulation: three fruits, orange juice standing in for the liquid, a spoonful of honey over the top, and you are drinking a pudding nobody decided on. It took me years to give up the honey, out of habit more than greed. Strawberries are good on the stalls here until the end of June, so the spring one, do it now.