Remember when you were younger and your parents insisted that you didn’t play with your food. Well, it doesn’t always pay to listen to adults; as Copenhagen-based photographer Mikkel Jul Hvilshøj (who is not a child anymore, we should add) has deconstructed a range of popular food dishes by showcasing them as a series of minimalist photographs.

In a shoot for Nordic cookware brand Eva, Mikkel Jul Hvilshøj lets the ingredients speak for themselves by unravelling each ingredient and organizing them in a precisely arranged manner to ‘create an image of minimalism and serenity, combining them with a dynamic, elegant and luxurious feeling.’ With his unique flat lay photos on rich matte backgrounds, Hvilshøj creates a variety of considered compositions of raw recipe materials like carrots, star anise and lemon to suggest that the cookware itself is an essential element in classic Scandinavian food and drink.