Savoury Autumn Fruit Salad

with plums, blackberries, grapes, fennel, chicory & a blackberry vinaigrette

Take 2 plates and lay 3 or 4 chicory leaves on each plate.

Now take 10-15 blackberries, keeping 5 or so back for the vinaigrette. Slice the blackberries in half down the centre and divide between the plates.

Chop the plums into thin segments, slice the grapes diagonally into discs, cut the fennel into thin sticks, and scatter some of each over both plates.

For the vinaigrette, into a pestle and mortar, add the rapeseed oil, cider vinegar and the remaining blackberries. Then add a small pinch of salt and work the blackberries into the oil and vinegar so that you have a runny yet glupey consistency. Using a spoon scatter the vinaigrette over each of the plates.

Serve with a nice slice of bread and salty butter.

This receipe relies more on your strategic chopping and assembly skills, as is the case with most salad dishes, there is not alot of actual cooking involved.

Cooking not only destroys nutrition and enzymes but it chemically changes food. Eating your food raw is the best way to ensure it retains maxium vitamin content.

Go raw as nature intended

Plums and blackberries are not ingredients I often use in salads but the combination with the fennel works really well.

Grapes, however, are an absolute salad must. I quite often have a hankering for a salad, but if I'm hungry, I will usually make the type of salad that has a large list of ingredients that will almost always incude cheese and grapes.