Christmas Fruit Salad: two ingredients, no fuss!
It seems like I go into so many things tush-first.
I didn’t set out to devise a Christmas dish yesterday, but it happened. My lunch included a fruit salad made of only two ingredients, kiwi and pomegranate, because that’s what I had on hand, courtesy of the most recent CSA delivery. It was not my intention to go all rah-rah-holiday with it, but after I tossed the two fruits into a bowl together, I realized that there was some serious Christmas potential in front of me.
If you want to make this salad, you need only these two ingredients, in whatever amount and proportion you desire. It really doesn’t need anything else. It’s an easy do-ahead and a fresh, welcome contrast to all those rich, wintery dishes.
This salad is for my cousin, Deb, who is a brilliant litigator, scholar and equestrienne, but who once cooked a holiday ham with the wrapper on. So she doesn’t take a hammer to the pomegranate and make her brother’s kitchen look like a scene in a third-rate horror flick come dinnertime on Christmas Day. So no one does this in anyone’s kitchen, here’s the fast, easy and tidy way to get the seeds out of a pomegranate.
If you’re not too well acquainted with kiwi, just remember that if it’s rock-solid, it will be sour. It needs a little pliability, a soft give when you lightly squeeze it. Peel it with a vegetable peeler instead of a knife, so you take away only the skin.
Here’s yesterday’s lunch fruit salad. I like this photo much better. The kiwis are a little soft and smoodgy, but they’re sweeter at this stage.
the prototype, the inspiration…
Pretty.
Yummy.
In-season.
It’s a keeper!
Well, I wish I had read your blog BEFORE I attempted this dish. It sounds so simple. Two ingredients. But…..I had pomegranate juice everywhere. It was running down my hands and dripping off my elbows right on the head of Wizard, the corgi always underfoot in the kitchen. He looked like he had the pox.
Then, I had to lose the membranes somehow. I tried draining, straining, and picking….this took hours, so it seemed. When I finished I had enough pomegranate seeds for one skinny model obsessed with her weight. Then I added the kiwi. Because I had so few pomegranate seeds, I sliced the kiwi extra thin….did not think to cube them like you did. So the kiwi turned to transparent slimy discs by the next day when I delivered them as the “surprise Christmas fruit salad” to my pregnant friend whose mother majored in HOME ECK. Did I mention that when I added a cup of balsamic vinegar the kiwi discs floated on top like cyclops’ eyes. So, I say….read the directions and ask questions….like HOW MUCH balsamic vinegar would be nice? Maybe a cup was too much? I did give you the credit for the recipe. Now I will tell them to read your blog to see how it should be done.
Yoiks, Deb!
Oh yes, always read the directions first. And if the fruit is in season, you really don’t need any balsamic at all. The sweetness and flavor of the fruit are quite enough. Please direct your friends to my blog entry. I’m not sure how I feel about getting the credit for “cyclops-eye salad,” but this does give me some ideas for next Halloween… 🙂
(Poor Wizard! I hope you didn’t haul him off to the vet because of a “pomegranate misadventure”!)
your amused cousin,
Carol