Papaya Salad

Papaya, Blood Orange and Strawberry Salad

from Salades, Damien Pignolet, Lantern, 2010.

The introduction to Salades states that the purpose of the book is to open up the idea of salads from the simple lettuce, tomato and cucumber with a bit of dressing and explore the variety of possibilities. The book has a great number of salads doing just that and it looks as though it is going to be a feast of exploration going through it. I began with a sweet salad.

The salad needs to be prepared some time before the meal. A syrup is made from blood orange juice and kirsch in which the strawberries need to be soaked and kept in the fridge for an hour.  Oranges need to be peeled and sliced. Orange zest has to be blanched. When all is ready the papaya is cut up and all the ingredients combined—and refrigerated.

It is a reasonably time-consuming recipe but well worth all of the effort. It looks great and the combination of fruits works extremely well.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔