Jazz Fruit Salad

Just about every year, I make a fruit salad for our Thanksgiving pot-luck lunch at the office. And every year, someone asks me for the recipe. While that’s flattering, I’m at a bit of a disadvantage because I use recipes to get ideas and not to actually cook from. Like musicians who play by ear, I cook by sense. Sight, smell, taste and touch, to be exact.

Having a general idea of where I want to get to, I start improvising, measuring nothing, changing ingredients on a whim or based on what looks good when I’m at the grocery. I measure nothing, but tweak until the taste, texture, aroma and presentation are the destination I had in mind.

With my fruit salad, the most important part is the citrus dressing. You can choose whatever fruit you like or looks good at the grocery to put in. Just about anything will work.

I usually use cantaloupe as a base fruit, then add grapes (they seem to be best when they are sliced in half long-ways), Granny Smith apples cut into wedges and then into big, hearty chunks, pineapple, kiwi, mango and mandarin oranges. Sun-dried fruit, like cherries, work well if you have enough time to let them soak overnight, and I’ve used pecans halves tossed in melted butter and then roasted under low heat in the oven. Leave some of the halves intact to use as garnish, but give the rest a coarse chop. Optionally, you can toss the pecans in butter and then sugar before roasting. (Turbinado sugar is the best because it retains a bit of molasses flavor. Raw sugar’s ok, and refined sugar works so-so.)

For the dressing, combine the juice of 2 medium oranges, 1 lemon and 2 limes with enough honey (a cup or two) to coat your fruit well. (The citrus will keep anything like apples from turning brown, but you should probably put them in last and when the honey-citrus mixture is ready.) If the lemon and lime make it too tart, you can add more honey until you have the flavor you want.

Also, if you use any canned fruit, you can add the liquid from it at your own discretion. Caveat: don’t add so much of the liquid that the dressing gets too thin. It should coat the fruit well with a small amount of liquid standing. When you refrigerate it, the other fruit will release juices, and you don’t want so much liquid that it becomes a cold fruit soup.

Toss the fruit in the dressing and add cinnamon, nutmeg and clove powder to taste. Heavier on the cinnamon and lighter on the nutmeg and clove—the last two are fairly potent in small amounts. One additional option is dried ginger, but the other spices tend to overwhelm its subtle zing.

Tip: I like to buy the spices in small quantities from the bulk section at Sun Harvest. They can lose their flavors quickly, especially the cinnamon, and the bulk products always seem fresher. Also, you can buy in the quantity that you need. (It’s much better than buying full bottles that will go stale before you use them up, so it’s also cheaper.)

Finally, I like to refrigerate it over-night in a closed container to let the juices meld and the spices seep into the fruit.

Like most dishes, the single most important thing is the ingredients you start with. The cantaloupe should be firm but not hard and fragrant when you smell where the vine was attached. The juice oranges should be softer and deeply colored. The apples should be very firm and the grapes sweet, not tart. (Purple ones seem to be better than the green ones.)

There’s really no end to what one can do with this basic framework. For a summer salad, leave out the spices other than ginger, and pile that it in. And instead of pecans, use toasted shaved coconut. Choose the fruits that are in season or you just happen to have a hankering for.

Improvise. Create. Enjoy.