LSA News

No. 93, November 2008

Fruit Salads for Winter
(continued)

But there is one salad that I make every year using Comice pears (Royal Riviera® is just Harry & David's name for that variety) that doesn't interfere with the natural goodness of the fruit. Somehow, adding fresh fruit to a salad adds a bit of summer sunshine to the dark days of winter. The dressing is made of rice vinegar and orange juice, invigorated by freshly scraped orange peel. The pears, along with dried cranberries and red onion slices, go into the dressing (unless you're serving immediately after slicing the pears, be sure to put the pears in the dressing after slicing them, as the fruit starts to turn brown almost immediately after they are cut open). For a variation, you can substitute pomegranate seeds for the cranberries. Extracting the seeds from a pomegranate is easy but a little messy.

Speaking of pomegranate, another way to bring a little summer to December is to make a sunshine salad using Clementines, those little seedless Mandarin oranges that you find in five-pound boxes in the markets in December. Simply combining the orange slices with pomegranate seeds makes for a colorful and tasty salad. If you want something that includes some greens, try combining mixed greens, Clementine wedges, pomegranate seeds and sliced almonds, and dress with a simple orange vinaigrette.

Fall is coming to an end, but even in December you can get some good Northwest apples that haven't been in cold storage very long, and the venerable Waldorf salad never goes out of style. Some recipes specify Red Delicious, though I greatly prefer some of the tarter varieties. Mutsu (Crispin) apples are among my favorites, though they're a little hard to find in supermarkets. Actually, any apple would be acceptable to me as long as it is a crisp one, since I have no tolerance for even a slight degree of mushiness in an apple.

Mayonnaise is the traditional dressing base, but the version I'm offering here uses yogurt in lieu of the mayo. As with most fructiferous salads, you can try endless variation.

Finally, a word on storing apples and pears. Though a fruit bowl looks lovely in the kitchen, I put my apples in the refrigerator as soon as I bring them home (my aversion to uncrisp apples trumps everything else). If you order pears from Harry & David, you'll find suggestions for storage in the package. If you don't like the idea of paying for all of that packaging and shipping, and the resulting carbon footprint, you can find Comice pears in several food markets. (Here in Eugene, I've found pretty good Comice pears at Market of Choice and Capella Market.) Place the pears in a paper bag to ripen (never plastic!), and recognize that the window of ideal ripeness is only about 24 hours, though ripe pears hold up well for about 10 days in the fridge.

Pear Spinach Salad

½ cup seasoned rice vinegar
½ cup orange juice
1 tsp orange zest
2 pears (firm-ripe)
½ cup dried cranberries
½ red onion
baby spinach

Mix orange juice, vinegar, orange peel together. Cut pears into thin slices (remove skin if desired); add pears, cranberries and onions to dressing. Place spinach on individual plates and add other ingredients on top.

Winter Sunshine Salad

4 cups mixed greens
2 mandarin oranges (clemintines), separated into wedges
1/4 cup pomegranate seeds
2 tbsp sliced almonds
Orange vinaigrette dressing

Orange Vinaigrette:

1 tbsp orange juice, preferably fresh
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp honey
1/4 tsp Dijon mustard
salt and pepper, to taste

In a bowl, combine ingredients in the order they appear above, add dressing and serve.

Waldorf Salad

1 cup chopped, slightly toasted walnuts
1 cup celery, thinly sliced
1 cup red seedless grapes, sliced
2 apples, cored and chopped
3 Tbsp yogurt
2 Tbsps fresh lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper, freshly ground

In a medium sized bowl, whisk yogurt and lemon juice. Add salt and pepper. Mix in the apple, celery, grapes, and walnuts.

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