Summer Salad

mayurisjikoni

7 years ago

EVENT: FOODIEMONDAY/BLOGHOP
THEME: #194 SUMMER FRUIT FEST

This week’s theme was suggested by Swaty who blogs at Food – Trails. Swaty’s blog is full of fun recipes from appetizers to desserts. I love her photography. Check out her blog for some exciting delicious recipes.

When Swaty suggested using summer fruits to create a recipe, I was happy as I was in the right place to enjoy really colorful summer fruits – Thailand. You’ll find many fruit vendors on the streets selling cut ripe mangoes, cut raw mangoes, water melons, dragon fruits, other melons, pineapples, peeled pomelo, durian, rambutan, rose apple slices, papaya, guava, coconut and longan.

A really colorful smoothie bowl would have been the ideal recipe for this theme, but I couldn’t make the smoothie as the Air BnB we occupied had no blender. The next best option was to make a salad. Usually I would buy a variety of fruits and pair it with cucumber, carrot, lettuce or other green leaves to make a light and healthy lunch if we were not out in the scorching sun. My favorite drink was what the vendors call coconut shake. It’s simply coconut water, coconut meat and ice all blended together into a delicious cold white drink.

It was our last day in Bangkok so hubby would not allow me to buy any more fruits or vegetables and insisted that I use up what we already had in the fridge. “Take it up as a challenge,”he quipped.

And that’s what I did, created a filling, healthy and delicious summer salad from the ingredients I had at hand. I created a simple oil free dressing to go with it.

The raw mango slices that are sold on the streets and the supermarket are not sour at all. They are sweet, yellow in colour and with a bit of salt, chili flakes and sugar it tastes awesome. I decided to use raw mango in my salad along with other fruits.

Dragon Fruit, strawberry pear or pitaya as its known was the other fruit I used. Did you know that dragon fruit grows on a climbing cactus plant called Hylocereus or Honolulu Queen whose flowers open only at night. The fruit has either a red, pink or yellow skin.

Pomelo or Chinese Grapefruit tastes like sweet orange and lemon together.

SUMMER SALAD

Serves 2

½ dragon fruit

½ pomelo

½ raw mango

1 cup fresh sprouted sunflower seeds

1 small red onion

2-3 tbsp roasted sunflower seeds

Lime Chilli Dressing:

¼ cup lime juice

½ tsp sea salt

½ tsp coconut sugar

½ – 1 tsp red chilli flakes ( or 1 small red chili finely chopped)

Chop the onion into thin slices.
Prepare the dressing by mixing lime juice, salt, sugar and red chili flakes.
Add the dressing to the sliced onions and let it marinate for 15-30 minutes.
In the meantime chop the fruits into bite size cubes.
Add the onion with dressing to the chopped fruit and mix gently.
Cover the salad with cling film or a plate and leave it in the fridge to chill for 15-20 minutes or till you’re ready to serve it.
Just before serving, add the sunflower seed sprouts and sprinkle sunflower seeds.

Tips:

Add summer fruits of your choice. The unique taste for this salad comes from the sweet but raw mango.
Use fresh red chili if you like.
Best to serve the salad chilled.
Use sprouted alfalfa seeds, sprouted mung beans or other sprouted seeds instead of sunflower seeds.
Add roasted nuts of your choice.

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