Chaos Fruit Salad
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I love fruit salad — it’s a low-stress, high-reward way to celebrate the bounty and deliciousness of in-season produce. It can be made year-round, substituting in whatever fruit is available, ripe and delicious. Pay attention when you buy, wash and prepare your produce — make sure no dirty, moldy or mushy bits end up in your final dish. Sample a bite of each fruit to make sure it tastes good and cut each ingredient in a way that is easy to eat while also being varied and pleasurable to the eye.
I am a maximalist, and I like my fruit salad to be a bit chaotic (like a big bowl of summer jewels floating in a tutti-frutti brodo) and for every bite to be different. I try to seek out my favorite varieties, and sometimes I’ll even mix different varieties of the same fruit. In terms of additional flavorings, I’m more restrained. I try to adapt to the fruit — if it’s lacking acidity, I’ll add a bit more citrus, or if it’s not perfectly sweet, perhaps a sweetener like sugar or honey.
However, this is your fruit salad. What follows below is the particular fruit salad I made, which I by no means expect you to replicate at home. Instead, I hope you’ll take the example below as a guiding inspiration to put together your own batch, to your own taste.
Note: Leftover fruit salad can be easily transformed into a lovely baked good. If you plan to bake with the extra, consider omitting any fruit that may not be nice to eat warm (like melon and some tropical fruits).
Summer Chaos Fruit Salad
Cut all your fruit in different shapes, aiming for everything to be bite-size. For example, I cut my grapes in half; peel the flesh out of the melon into long, thin sheets with a big spoon; and cut my cherries into 1/8th-inch cross-wise slices. Combine all of the fruit, nut mix, and orange juice in a large bowl and mix well.
Taste. If it tastes good, skip to step 4.
Adjust. If it doesn’t taste good, think about what it is lacking. Does it need sweetness? Add sugar or honey. Acidity? Add lime or lemon juice. Tinker until it is delicious.
Chill fruit salad thoroughly in the refrigerator. Ice cold!! Serve forth in a big bowl, or perhaps individually in little cocktail glasses.
Freeze any leftovers in a sealed plastic bag or covered container for up to 3 months, to be used in future baking, or cocktails.
