Fruit Salad

photo: Eric Diesel

Just in time for Monday's Solstice, summer has arrived full-stop in Astoria.  In Astoria Park, joggers wired for sound zip by while shirts take on skins on the basketball courts.  For more leisurely strollers, gathering twilight brings sightings of resident bats at the feed.  Daredevils scramble around and, yes, up the pilings of the Hell Gate Bridge, while on the nearby great lawn, the free movie and concert schedule has been posted.  On one such night, we will head over with a hamper packed with homemade pickles, sandwiches made on pumpernickel and date-nut bread, cheese, crackers and California wine.

For dessert, cookies, brownies and hand pies are nice, but there are plenty of sweets at the ice cream truck, so I like to bring fruit salad to picnics.  Fresh fruit is the essence of summer, as much the gift of Mother Earth as the sunshine is the gift of Father Sky.  Fresh fruit, selected and prepared with care, sparkles with flavor and texture, awakening the palate with the sensations of the awakened earth Herself.

Why, then, is it so easy to find an indifferent fruit salad?  In the school cafeteria, fruit salad was a bewildering miasma of white cubes, yellow cubes, green eyeball-like things, and the occasional mealy cherry, all swimming in gluey syrup. At the Woolworth’s lunch counter, they came up with a closer approximation: actual chunks of fresh fruit, served in an icy parfait glass, studded with fresh blueberries if they were in season, crowned if you wished with whipped cream and a sundae cherry.  At grown-up quick-service lunch hour places, they fill a clear plastic clamshell with melon chunks, pineapple, and a grape or two.  No matter where I've foraged, I haven't found a ready-made fruit salad that is as good as one made at home.

Of course, this is because I remember my grandmother’s fruit salads.  She had a full garden that, as spring budded and summer bloomed, produced straight through to fall: apricots, apples, pears, berries, grapes, even paw-paws, a Western fruit with a taste and texture somewhere between a banana and a persimmon.  Stone fruits that she didn't grow could be bartered bushel for bushel at the orchard stand for her state fair prize-winning cucumbers and tomatoes.

Produce was sorted into piles for trading and for canning, while the freshest was saved for the lunch and dinner tables.  She showed me how to clean peaches in a sink full of ice water, and how to carve a nectarine with no more than three flicks of the knife.  She showed me how to strip good grapes from the stem while discarding the bad ones without missing a beat.  She showed me how to keep apples, pears and bananas from oxidizing.

From these labors, a jumble of peaches, pears and berries, dressed in the lightest of simple syrups, was placed on the breakfast table every Saturday.  She served garden club luncheons on yellow Depression glass, arranging on such a platter glistening supremes of oranges (store-bought; one thing she didn't have was an orangerie), curls of fresh coconut, and tiny mint leaves pinches from the tops of the plants.

From my grandmother, and from other good cooks since then, I have learned the guidelines for making fruit salad.  First, whether it comes from your garden or the local grocer's, use the very best, freshest fruit of the day.  Second, use just a few varieties of fruit for your fruit salad; more than this and the distinct flavors and textures of the fruit get lost.  Third, make a simple dressing to enhance the flavors of the ingredients.  Fourth, serve your fruit salad chilled.  And fifth -- make it often, because fruit salad is such a wonderful way to celebrate the great gift of fresh fruit in season.

FRUIT SALAD

There are as many combinations for fruit salad as there are cooks to make it.  This is the combination we like in our urban home.  However, lots of combinations work wonderfully: cantaloupe, honeydew and watermelon; plums, grapes and cherries; pineapple, papaya and mango; peaches and berries.  Whenever possible, buy organic; when not, be sure to clean fruit as necessary with a commercial fruit cleaner.

For the salad

2 sweet apples, such as gala, fuji or honeycrisp
1 tart apple, such as Granny Smith

3 medium nectarines

2 kiwi fruit

1 dry pint strawberries

1 lemon

For the dressing

1 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon orange juice or orange liqueur

1 tablespoon water

1. Set a colander into a bowl large enough to hold it.  Fill the bowl halfway with water.  Slice the lemon into thirds.  Use a lemon press or juicer to juice the lemon into the water, working over a sieve to catch pith and seeds.

2. Set a bowl large enough to accommodate the salad near your working area.  Add the water to the bowl.  Dissolve the sugar in the water, then whisk in the juice or liqueur to combine.

3. Remove leaves if any from the strawberries.  Set each strawberry leaf-end down on a cutting board and use a paring knife to slice each berry in half from bottom to top; halve large halves to form quarters.  Use the tip of the knife to remove and discard hard white core if any.  Return the prepared strawberries to the pint box or plastic shell; rinse and set aside to drain.

4. Working one at a time, place an apple stem-end up on the cutting board.  Use a paring knife to cut the apple in half from top to bottom.  Halve each half to form quarters.  Use the tip of the knife to remove and discard the stem, seeds with their hard core, the blossom end, and any bruised or discolored areas.  Cut each trimmed quarter in half; cut across each to form bite-sized chunks.  Once all of the apples are prepared, scrape the chunked apples into the lemon water, swirling if necessary to ensure that the fruit is immersed.  Once you've prepared and added all of the apples to the lemon water, remove the colander with the apples in it.  Shake the colander vigorously.  Set the colander aside to drain; the apples should be treated to prevent browning.  If they do start to discolor, re-immerse them in the lemon water.

5. Clean each nectarine under cool running water, using a commercial vegetable cleaner if the fruit is waxed.  Hold the nectarine in your palm, stem side up.  Use a paring knife to score the nectarine to its stone, moving in a full circle from the stem around the fruit and back up to the stem.  Do the same thing between the halves you just made to quarter the nectarine.  Score the nectarine to the stone around the middle.  The nectarine should now be scored into eight pieces.

6. Twist the nectarine so that the scored pieces pull free from the stone; discard the stone or save for sprouting and planting.  Lay the nectarine pieces skin side down on the cutting board and cut away and discard the pebbly flesh of the fruit where it grew from the stone.  Cut the nectarine chunks into bite-sized pieces.  Scrape into the bowl with the dressing.

7.  Lay each kiwi on its side on the cutting board.  Use a paring knife to cut away the top and bottom of the fruit; be sure to get the pin from the stem end.  Use the paring knife to make a small incision perpendicular to the cut edge of the fruit just through the brown outer skin.  Using the cut as a guide, insert a small spoon (a grapefruit spoon works well) between the brown skin and the flesh of the fruit.  Move the spoon down and around; the flesh of the fruit should separate from the skin.  Gently remove the spoon and slide the flesh out of the brown skin.

8.  Cut the kiwi in half from stem to blossom end; halve each half.  Halve again to form quarters.  Cut across each quarter to form bite-sized triangles.  Scrape into the bowl with the dressing.

9.  Add the drained apples to the bowl.

10. Use a silicone spatula to gently toss the fruit salad, being sure that the mixture is evenly coated with the dressing.

11.  Set in the refrigerator to chill for at least 15 minutes.

12. Before serving, add the fresh strawberries to the fruit salad, tossing gently to combine.